Thomas Hesse (Born 1966, Brussels[1]) is President of Sony Music Entertainment's Global Digital Business, US Sales, and Corporate Strategy. He reports to Doug Morris, Chief Executive Officer for Sony Music Entertainment. He is based in New York City.
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Hesse holds a BA and MA from Oxford University, an MSc from the London School of Economics and a Doctorate in Corporate Finance from the University of St. Gallen.[1] He studied as a concert pianist at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and the Hochschule für Musik in Düsseldorf, Germany.[2]
Hesse was appointed to the position of President in charge of Global Digital Business for the combined company upon the completion of the merger of Sony Music and BMG in 2004 (in 2008, Sony acquired Bertelsmann's stake and renamed the company from Sony BMG to Sony Music). In that role, he is responsible for Sony Music's worldwide revenues from digital exploitation via online and mobile media, as well as for New Technology and Digital Business Development. Since the beginning of 2007, Hesse was also put in charge of the company's physical sales activities in the US, including CDs and DVDs. He is also responsible for Corporate Strategy.
Hesse joined BMG in New York to serve as Chief Strategic Officer in 2002. In that role he was driving BMG's merger with Sony Music and was also responsible for Digital Business Development and New Technology. Prior to joining BMG, Hesse was Executive Vice President and Head of Corporate Strategy at Bertelsmann AG, and previously held a number of executive positions at the company's television division RTL. At RTL, Hesse was Secretary General of RTL Television, Germany, in charge of Program Acquisition and Distribution, and CEO of RTL NEW MEDIA. Hesse began his career in media and entertainment as a corporate consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he focused on Media and Corporate Finance.
Since joining Sony BMG, Hesse has led the company's Global Digital Business division, developing initiatives across a variety of platforms and channels, ranging from internet downloads and subscriptions to mobile ringtones, full-length mobile downloads, and videos.
Hesse has led a number of initiatives and deals developing Sony Music's digital and physical business. In January 2011, Sony Music was reported as the first major music company to sign a deal with Swedish start-up Spotify for the US. In June 2009, Sony Music announced that it would join Universal Music in VEVO, a premium music video service to launch in partnership with YouTube. In July 2009, Sony Music announced a partnership with independent digital distribution company IODA. In May 2009, Sony Music announced an extension of the distribution deal with indie label Razor and Tie, and in January 2009 with indie label Wind-Up.
In April 2008 Sony BMG joined other major music companies in forming MySpace Music, a joint venture that will serve as an interactive online platform for music sales, subscription services and ad-supported entertainment. On April 4 of 2008, The Philadelphia Inquirer quoted Hesse as saying of the deal that "...the exciting part of this is that it marries the social networking of MySpace with access to the music. It creates a new kind of destination at your fingertips, with all of the content and the social interaction that keeps it fresh."[3]
Later in April 2008 the company announced that it had joined Nokia's "Comes With Music," which involves mobile phones bundled with access to music, enabling users to download and listen to as many songs as they like. On April 22 the Associated Press quoted Hesse as saying, "When you give consumers the key to the candy store without any limitations, there's a lot more opportunity for discovering music that you might not have found before. We think this will energize the discovery of music."[4]
Hesse also led company on its first forays into DRM-free music, and in January 2008 he announced in USA Today Sony BMG's intention to sell unprotected digital music gift cards, saying "The bigger picture is to make our music available in many different formats, through many different channels, in many different ways." [5] Several days later, on January 11, he unveiled the second part of the company's DRM-free initiative, announcing that the company would join Amazon's DRM-free store, telling USA Today that the "newest element of our ongoing campaign to bring our music to fans wherever they happen to be."[6]
Hesse presented these initiatives as part of a more general approach to making music available across multiple formats and business models. On January 19, 2008 he told Billboard Magazine, the music industry trade publication, that the company was "moving from a single-product world where we sold the CD at stores to a multi-product, multi-income stream environment in both the physical and digital space."
In the fall of 2006, while speaking at The Digital Music Forum West, he predicted strong growth in the digital segment, noting that digital sales and service accounted for around 20 percent of the company's digital music division (at that time), and forecasting that "That percentage should rise "significantly."[7] Subsequent events bore out his predictions and, in January 2008, when Hesse spoke at Midem in Cannes, the New York Post quoted him as saying that he "expected digital sales in the US to account for half of its revenue...in 2009," and that "digital accounted for almost a third of Sony BMG's US revenue {the previous year}" [8]
Hesse came under fire from consumer rights advocates for comments he made in a piece that aired on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, November 4, 2005 .[9] While being questioned about Sony's controversial use of a rootkit that acts as spyware and malware that led to the 2005 Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal, installed when a user listens to a Sony BMG CD on a computer, Hesse said, "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"[10]
Hesse serves on several Board of Directors, including Vevo LLC, MySpace Music LLC, and IODA Inc. He is also a member of the Supervisory Board of DEAG Classics.