Veteran media and music executives Ralph Munsen and Vinnie Freda have been named Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Data Officer (CDO), respectively, of Warner Music Group.
Both execs will report to CEO Steve Cooper, and their arrivals represent a new senior management structure for the company’s technology and data areas.
Munsen and Freda will work closely together to ‘ensure WMG is providing its artists, songwriters and labels with cutting-edge, best-in-class technology architecture and data analytics capabilities’.
Ralph Munsen comes to WMG with twenty years of media and entertainment experience, including senior technology positions at Accenture, EMI Music, Clear Channel/ iHeartMedia, and Hachette Book Group, where he served a five-year stint as CIO.
Munsen was most recently Global Managing Partner of Delivery for GroupM, the media investment giant.
Vinnie Freda is a three-decade music industry veteran whose wide-ranging experience includes 23 combined years with MCA Records and its owner, Universal Music Group, where he became EVP of Digital Logistics and Business Services.
Freda was most recently President and COO of INgrooves Music Group, the independent music distribution and marketing company.
“Ralph and Vinnie both bring decades of deep experience and a forward-thinking, agile approach, which makes them ideally suited to WMG.”
Steve Cooper, Warner Music Group
As WMG’s CIO, Munsen will lead the company’s global technology strategy, infrastructure, and operations.
His responsibilities will include developing innovative solutions, systems, and platforms that serve the creative and commercial needs of WMG’s divisions, artists, and business partners.
In the newly-created post of Chief Data Officer, Freda will be responsible for developing a strategy for data management throughout the company, championing the use of data to provide useful insight.
“The establishment of these two interdependent senior management posts reflects the importance of providing advanced tech solutions and comprehensive, user-friendly data to our teams across the globe,” said Steve Cooper.
“Ralph and Vinnie both bring decades of deep experience and a forward-thinking, agile approach, which makes them ideally suited to WMG. Together, they will spearhead our efforts to deploy innovative technological tools while ensuring that data, accompanied by our instincts and expertise, is at the heart of our decision-making and best-in-class services for artists and songwriters.”
“I’m thrilled to be joining WMG at this time of dynamic change in the music industry,” said Ralph Munsen. “I’ve long been an admirer of the company’s leading-edge approach to the adoption of advanced technology, and I’m looking forward to helping take the team to the next level.”
“I’m very happy to be returning to WMG, where I got my start in the business thirty years ago at Warner Bros. Records,” said Vinnie Freda.
“We are living in a data-driven age, and it’s critical that we organize and present that data in a way that it becomes an integral part of the WMG culture across all areas of the company.”
