Kitatani Named Chair, Warner Music Japan
• Dr. Kenji Kitatani, Chairman of sports media company DAZN Japan, has been appointed as Chairman of Warner Music Japan. Dr. Kitatani is a renowned global media and entertainment business expert with substantial corporate experience and academic expertise and a career spanning more than four decades.
In this new role he will be working closely with Kazuyuki “Kaz” Kobayashi, President & CEO of Warner Music Japan, to further grow the company’s presence in the world’s second largest music market.
Dr. Kitatani started his career holding faculty positions at Washington State University and Indiana University before moving into the broadcasting industry in the 1980s, serving in senior international executive positions at Nippon Television Network and Tokyo Broadcasting System. In 1989, he was appointed as a Board Director of Tokyo Dome Corporation and President of its American subsidiaries in New York. A decade later, Kitatani joined the Sony Corporation and held Executive Officer and Executive Vice President of Sony Corporation of America positions concurrently. He went on to serve as President of Avex International Holdings, Japan’s largest independent music entertainment conglomerate, between 2011 and 2017.
Kitatani was later named EVP, Asia and Executive Director for Japan at AEG, before taking up advisory roles at Broadmedia, Mitsubishi and NTT Docomo, and assuming the Chairmanship of DAZN Japan last year. Kitatani is currently acting as a Professor and Director at the Institute for Content and Technology Integration at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology and is also a regular columnist for Forbes Japan.
Kobayashi commented, “I’m delighted to welcome Dr. Kenji Kitatani to Warner Music and am pleased that such a distinguished executive has agreed to take on this challenge. We’ve achieved a lot in the last decade at Warner Music Japan, but our industry never stands still, and we need to continue to adapt if we are to keep being the first choice for our country’s most exciting artists.”
Dr. Kitatani remarked, “This is an exciting time in the Japanese music industry. I’m delighted to take up this new role at Warner Music, working with Kaz on the continuing evolution of the company as we build the most forward-thinking label in the Japanese market.”
