New York, 3rd August 2022 Merlin, the independent’s digital music licensing partner, has appointed Kyle Elwin in a newly-established role of People & Culture Lead. Elwin’s hire is the organization’s first of this type. She will report directly to Merlin’s CEO, Jeremy Sirota, to help develop the company’s culture and support team growth. With her leadership, Merlin will continue to foster an environment of creativity and collaboration, two key traits in the fast-paced world of music and technology.
“Kyle arrives at a great time in this incredibly important role for Merlin to encourage communication, coordination, and foster a range of perspectives,” said Merlin CEO Jeremy Sirota. “Combined with her passion for driving positive culture and change, Kyle will be an integral member of the Merlin team and help guide our people and culture vision across our global team.”
Merlin’s People & Culture Lead is key because the company has doubled in size since 2020, with a global team now spread across four countries and nine cities. The Merlin team works across many time zones to support its global membership, which consists of independent labels, distributors, and other rights-holders around the world. Merlin members represent 15% of the music market and consists of tens of thousands of labels and hundreds of thousands of artists. Merlin strikes premium deals with digital music services on members’ behalf. Partnerships include Apple, Meta/Facebook, Peloton, Snap, Spotify, TikTok, YouTube, and most recently FLO in Korea, Lickd, and now Twitch.
Based in New York City, Elwin draws from a wealth of global experience. She supported teams that enabled brands ranging from McDonald’s, Starbucks, Walmart, and Disney to HBO, Hulu, Spotify, Airbnb, and JetBlue. She previously worked at mParticle, a B2B customer data pipeline, as Human Resources Business Partner. There, she worked with teams across the organization to identify improvements and create solutions. She also led diversity and inclusion programs and practices. Elwin helped elevate mParticle to Crain’s “Best Places to Work in NYC” list annually from 2016 to 2020. In her nearly four-year tenure, she oversaw the company’s restructuring and growth as it more than doubled in size.
“The opportunity to help nurture the people and culture at Merlin is an incredible opportunity,” said Elwin. “In this role, I’m excited to bring my knowledge of people, culture, process, and productivity to help the global team. My vision is for them to derive the best value from their roles as they support Merlin’s mission to help independents around the world stay independent.”
Merlin has teams in London, New York, North Carolina, the Netherlands, and Tokyo.
Find out more at www.merlinnetwork.org.
About Merlin:
Merlin provides independents the means to own their future. Merlin is a member led, music focused organization providing digital music licensing for independents across the globe. Members benefit from Merlin’s premium deals, but work directly with key digital partners. Our membership consists of independent labels, distributors, and other rights-holders, representing tens of thousands of labels and hundreds of thousands of artists from every country in the world. Merlin works collaboratively with our digital partners, delivers value back to those digital partners, and seeks to drive other incremental benefits to our members.
Merlin’s approach has enabled our membership to grow to represent 15% of the global market share. Merlin’s membership includes independents such as Altafonte, Amuse, Armada Music, AudioSalad, AVL Group (including CD Baby, DashGo and FUGA), Beggars Group, Cinq Music Group, Dim Mak, DistroKid, Domino, Epitaph Records, Foundation Media, Freeme Digital, IDOL, Kontor New Media, Mad Decent, MNRK Music Group, Monstercat, Mushroom Music, Ninja Tune, ONErpm, [PIAS], Pony Canyon, Redeye, Secret City, Secretly, Symphonic Distribution, Sub Pop, Vydia, and hundreds more.
Merlin has deals with nearly 40 digital services, including partners like Apple, Boomplay, Deezer, FLO, JioSaavn, JOOX, KKBox, Meta (Facebook), NetEase, Pandora, Peloton, Snap, SoundCloud, Spotify, Tencent, TikTok, TREBEL, Triller, YouTube Music, and many other global, regional and strategic partners, as well as being in conversations with dozens more.
