MUMBAI: Warner Music UK has appointed Paul Craig to the newly-created role of senior vice president, artist partnerships, Warner Music UK.

Craig, currently general manager of Atlantic Records UK, will oversee the full range of artist service capabilities Warner Music UK can deliver beyond recorded music.

Drawing on his experience as a top-flight artist manager, Craig will work closely with all the labels in the WMUK family to help devise activation strategies around their artists’ rights. As a pioneer of ‘360°’ agreements with artists, Warner Music has already developed in-house expertise in live, merchandise, brand association, management, sync and direct-to-consumer digital solutions. Craig will build on these practice areas in the UK so labels including Warner Bros Records, Atlantic Records, Rhino, Asylum, sixsevenine, B-Unique, Warner Music Entertainment and 14th Floor can offer their artists full-service, integrated support.

Warner Music UK & Europe CEO and Warner Music International vice-chairman John Reid said, “As soon as we identified the need for this role, it was obvious to us that we already had the ideal candidate. Paul has spent his whole career finding and developing creative and commercial relationships for his acts. Over the past eighteen months, his unique perspective has been invaluable in helping us to formulate our artist services strategy. By allowing him to focus on that full-time I believe we will unlock even greater potential to create career-defining partnerships with our artists.”

Craig added, “I’m extremely excited to be leading our cross-label Artist Partnerships efforts. Since I arrived at Warner Music in 2007, the company has demonstrated a clear commitment to building skill-sets that create added value for our acts. By tapping into the network of specialists we now have around the world and by harnessing what has already been put in place here in the UK we have a solid foundation for growth in this area. I look forward to building on that and helping to take the company to the next phase in its evolution as an artist services company.”