American content distributor ONErpm lost its CEO in Russia

Nadezhda Boicevski, CEO and head of artist and repertoire relations at digital distributor ONErpm Eastern Europe, will leave her position on October 13, Ms. Boicevski herself said at the Colisium International Music Forum on September 24 at the music industry conference Colisium International Music Forum. As Nadezhda Boychevsky clarified in an interview with Kommersant, she intends to take up a new project, which she will announce later. Artem Trifonov, development director of the company, may become interim CEO of ONErpm Eastern Europe. Previously, Nadezhda Boychevsky was the executive producer of the Respect Production label (Kasta, Vladi, Max Korzh, etc.), the general director of the Hajime Rec label (Miyagi & Andy Panda) and worked at Universal Music Russia.

Zvonko Group Managing Partner Dmitry Konnov noted that Nadezhda Boychevsky is one of the biggest professionals in the industry and her departure will be a significant loss for the company: “One can only be glad for a company that can get such an expert.”

ONErpm was founded in 2010 in the USA by Emmanuel Zunz and Matthew Olim, has offices in 30 countries, opened a representative office in Russia in 2019. Among the partners are VK Music, Sound, Yandex.Music, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and others. According to its own data, the company has released 288 thousand releases in the world, of which more than 30 thousand are Russian performers (A`Studio, Zemfira, Caspian Cargo, DDT, Igor Butman, Morgenstern, Electrophoresis, Hadn Dadn, Curara, Tequilajazzz, etc.). The company in Russia specializes in working with indie music (independent artists) and providing label services, being a hybrid company that works with both emerging artists and well-known performers in the Russian Federation and the CIS.

Before the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, more than ten companies providing digital music distribution services operated in Russia, including global major labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group, The Orchard (controlled by Sony), French Believe Digital, its subsidiary TuneCore, ONErpm, local Zvonko Group (established in 2021, unites First Musical, National Music Publishing House, Soyuz Studio, Soyuz Music), etc. According to the interlocutor of Kommersant in the music market, at the beginning of the year ONErpm took up to 5% of music distribution.

After February 24, major labels suspended work in the region, from foreign distributors the publication of new releases and work under existing contracts continued to Believe Digital, TuneCore and ONErpm. In July ONErpm seized from Russian streaming platforms, including Yandex.Music, Sound and VK Music, releases by musicians whose accounts are not registered in the Russian Federation, Belarus and Kazakhstan. This was necessary so that the payments collected by them became available to the performers from these countries.

Julia Silence