Warner Music Group (WMG) announced the promotion of Kris Ahrend to the position of Senior Vice President, Recorded Music Rights Administration. In his new post, Ahrend will oversee a newly established division encompassing U.S. Artist Royalties, Publishing Royalties and Licensing, Master Licensing, Rights Administration, and Catalog Legal Affairs.
Based in Los Angeles, he will report to Matt Flott, CFO, Recorded Music, WMG. Ahrend was most recently Senior Vice President of Business& Legal Affairs for the Rhino Entertainment division of WMG. In making the announcement, Matt Flott said, “By uniting Kris’s expertise with these complementary departments, we are creating a single interdisciplinary team that will be able to address the administrative and rights-related needs of our U.S. business units efficiently and effectively.
Since joining the WMG family nearly eight years ago, Kris has demonstrated the legal savvy, leadership skills, and commercial vision that make him ideally suited to lead this effort. I congratulate him on this well-deserved promotion.”Kris Ahrend said, “In establishing the Recorded Music Rights Administration division, we have assembled a fantastic team with a tremendous collective knowledge of WMG’s recorded music catalog. Their combined skill set and experience will provide a great foundation for pursuing our shared mission of providing industry-leading administrative and rights management services to our labels and their artists.
I want to thank Matt and the WMG senior executive team for this exciting opportunity.”Kris Ahrend joined the Rhino Entertainment division of WMG in 2006 as Vice President of Business& Legal Affairs and was promoted to SVP in 2009. He previously worked at Sony Music Entertainment, where he served as Counsel in the Law Department before being named Director of Business& Legal Affairs. Prior to Sony, Ahrend was an associate at the law firm of Simpson Thacher& Bartlett.
He began his legal career by serving as a law clerk for The Honorable Glen E. Conrad of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia and The Honorable Ellsworth A.
Van Graafeiland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He holds a J.D. from Washington& Lee University School of Law and earned his B.A. degree from Binghamton University.