The music industry location Berlin continues to gain in importance. After Sony Music moved from Munich to Berlin in 2020, the Warner Music Group is now also planning to significantly expand its location in Berlin. “We are expanding our representative office in Berlin,” a company spokesman confirmed to the Tagesspiegel. This also involves the move to a new location in Berlin. The company’s European headquarters have so far been in Hamburg. Formally, this should remain the case for the time being. “There is no move of the headquarters to Berlin,” said the Warner spokesman.
So far, around 30 employees work for Warner in Berlin, and around 200 in Hamburg. However, there are increasing signs that Berlin will play a much larger role for the company in the future. Warner has apparently been in intensive contact with the Berlin Partner business development agency for a long time, which advises companies on settling in Berlin. When asked about Warner Music, Stefan Franzke, Managing Director at Berlin Partner, recently said it was an “interesting question”. “I am pleased that there will be an expansion of the activities of a Hamburg music publisher.”
Warner is one of the world’s three dominant music companies, the so-called “Majors”. In addition to Warner, this includes Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music. Both companies have their German and European headquarters in Berlin.
Coldplay and Muse moved to Warner
The Warner Music Group, which has its headquarters in New York, recently had annual sales of 5.3 billion dollars and made a profit of 307 million dollars. She has signed international greats such as the bands Coldplay, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Muse. The best-known German performers include Udo Lindenberg and DJs Robin Schulz and Alle Farben.
Should Warner’s focus actually shift from Hamburg to Berlin, history would repeat itself for the two cities. The Universal Music Group moved from the Elbe and Spree back in the early 2000s. Even then there were rumors about a change from Warner, but they have so far stuck to Hamburg.
The return of Sony Music, which first moved to Munich in 2004 after the merger with the Bertelsmann Music Group, could have strengthened the pull effect to Berlin. “I am pleased that we are now moving together on Germany’s most important playing field,” said Sony Music boss Mushatsi-Kareba at the time to the Tagesspiegel about the choice of location. The Sony example also shows that the formal company headquarters does not have to play a particularly important role. The Munich address is still in the imprint of Sony Music, although the Berlin location clearly dominates.
Doreen Schmink, Warner’s co-boss, told the FAZ in May 2022 a sentence that could be read as a commitment to Hamburg at the time: “Hamburg-Berlin as a route is no longer a problem today, and with hybrid working models there is even more flexibility anyway possible,” she told the newspaper at the time. From today’s perspective, one has to say that the reverse is also true.
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