Swedish music service Hyph has appointed Hartwig Masuch — former CEO of BMG — as its chairman, effective April of this year.
Masuch, who has already joined the company in an advisory capacity, will help guide Hyph’s strategic expansion as it aims to create interactive services at a time when traditional subscription streaming growth is leveling off. Led by CEO and hit songwriter Andreas Carlsson, Hyph is building tools that allow fans to create and engage with music in novel ways.
The company’s core technology centers on a massive library of millions of wholly owned, human‑created musical parts — described by the company as the “building blocks of popular music.” Hyph’s first product, currently being tested in multiple regions, including the Nordics, the UK and Sub‑Saharan Africa, is an app that lets fans assemble their own songs using these components. Additional products in development include a marketplace where artists can sell vocal lines, hooks and other musical elements directly to consumers, as well as APIs that enable labels to activate catalog and deepen fan engagement.
Courtesy of Hyph
Masuch brings decades of experience to the role, having built BMG from a three‑person start‑up in 2009 into a global company generating more than $900 million in revenue by 2023. Under his leadership, BMG completed over 200 acquisitions and grew into the world’s fourth‑largest music company. His history with Bertelsmann dates back to 1991, when he oversaw Germany, Switzerland and Austria for the original BMG Music Publishing. In 2008, he advised Bertelsmann during the sale of its stake in Sony BMG Music Entertainment to Sony and soon after helped launch BMG Rights Management — the company that ultimately became BMG.
“Streaming transformed music for the better, unleashing a wave of transparency which has empowered artists and restored the industry to profitability,” said Masuch. “But as subscription streaming begins to peak in major markets, music is increasingly thinking about what’s next. Hyph, with its commitment to human-generated music, and its understanding of the new creator economy is ideally poised to play its part in music’s next revolution. I am delighted to join Andreas and the team in turning this vision into reality.”
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Carlsson, a Songwriters Hall of Fame nominee known for hits for Backstreet Boys, NSYNC and Celine Dion, praised Masuch as one of the most accomplished executives of the past two decades and said his leadership will help Hyph drive “the first genuine leap forward for music” since the rise of streaming.
“Since I became CEO of this company 18 months ago, my mission, drawing on all my experiences as a songwriter and my deep understanding of rights, has been to create an ecosystem that allows musicians to prosper while using technology to give non‑musicians the ability to play with music in a way they have never had before,” said Carlsson. “The addition of Hartwig to our team brings that vision one step closer.”
