YouTube has a new label relations boss: SoundCloud’s Stephen Bryan

YouTube has confirmed that it has poached SoundCloud‘s Chief Content Officer, Stephen Bryan. He’s been named Head of Label Relations at the online video giant.

MBW broke the news last week that Bryan was set to join his former Warner Music Group colleague Lyor Cohen at YouTube.

Bryan leaves SoundCloud at the end of this month, and will officially become a YouTube employee in July.

Cohen, Global Head of Music at YouTube, said: “At YouTube, we have over a billion viewers and thousands of label partners and Stephen is going to be the bridge that brings them together.

“Stephen is going to help labels and artists dream up new opportunities to reach fans around the world.”

Lyor Cohen, YouTube

“As that crucial link, he’s going to help labels and artists dream up new opportunities to reach fans around the world.”

Bryan joined SoundCloud three years ago, and played an instrumental role in the streaming platform eventually inking licensing deals with all three major labels – Warner, Sony and Universal – for premium on-demand service SoundCloud Go+.

The exec arrived at SoundCloud after 17 years at WMG, where he ended his tenure as EVP, Digital Strategy and Business Development.

During this period, working under Cohen, he was involved in landmark deals at Warner with the likes of YouTube, Spotify and iTunes.

The announcement of Bryan’s arrival at YouTube comes five months after the departure of another former Lyor Cohen colleague, Tamara Hrivnak – who left her role as Director Of Music Partnerships at YouTube and Google Play to join Facebook earlier this year.

YouTube boasts more than a billion active users each month. SoundCloud is, by volume, the world’s next biggest music streaming service with more than 175m monthly users.Music Business Worldwide