Spotify has appointed Niklas Brantberg as managing director for the Nordics, giving the streaming company a new leader in the region where it was founded. Brantberg started in the role in early September and set out his priorities publicly soon after. He arrives after 12 years at Epidemic Sound and its associated studios, and takes on a market that remains central to Spotify’s identity and its relationships with the music industry.
Brantberg joined Epidemic Sound in 2014 and rose to senior vice president of global sales and streaming partnerships before becoming chief of music in 2019. He most recently served as chief executive of Overtone Studios, a Sweden-based label that Epidemic Sound acquired. That experience spans licensing, sales and label operations across the music business, and gives him ties on both the platform and rights-holder sides of the industry.
Setting out his approach, Brantberg said he wanted the company to engage on the harder debates shaping the industry. “I want Spotify to be a constructive voice on big, complex questions like AI and platform responsibility,” he said, pointing to issues that have become central for streaming services and rights holders alike as artificial intelligence reshapes how music is made and distributed.
He also framed the job around relationships with the people who supply the platform’s content. “I want to build stronger, more valuable partnerships with artists, authors, creators, labels and publishers across the Nordics,” he said. He added that his first priority was to take stock, saying, “Right now though, mostly I just want to listen and learn,” a nod to the scale of the role.
The appointment places a music-industry insider in charge of one of Spotify’s most symbolically important markets, home to a dense ecosystem of Nordic artists, labels and publishers. His comments on artificial intelligence and platform responsibility signal that the company expects those debates to shape its relationships with rights holders in the region and beyond, at a time when the economics of streaming remain under scrutiny across the industry. Spotify was founded in Stockholm in 2006 and remains one of the largest music streaming services in the world, which makes its home region a closely watched part of the business.
