Kurt Thielen

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Kurt Thielen (born June 24, 1958 in Duisburg ) is a German entrepreneur. He is the founder and managing partner of Zebralution , one of the world's largest digital distributors for music and audio books. Before that he was head of Rough Trade Records and later of Zomba Records in Germany, Austria and Switzerland for more than 20 years .

Thielen started his career in 1979 in a record store. From 1982 to 1983 Thielen worked at the Bochum Club Zeche . He then moved to the newly founded German branch of Geoff Travis ' Rough Trade, Rough Trade Distribution in Herne, of which he became managing director in 1986. When the British parent company became insolvent in 1991, the German Rough Trade Distribution was able to decouple and was sold to the British distributor Pinnacle Entertainment, with Thielen becoming a ten percent partner. Pinnacle Entertainment itself was bought by Zomba in 1996. Thielen stayed until 2002 when Zomba owner Clive Calder withdrew from the music business and the company was taken over by BMG / Bertelsmann . Thielen has worked with a variety of acts from New Order and The Smiths to the Backstreet Boys , Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake . After selling the company, he and Sascha Lazimbat founded the first European digital distributor for independent labels, Zebralution, with a global focus in 2004 . In 2007 the Warner Music Group acquired Zebralution. Since 2010 digital audio books and especially streaming have been an important factor in Zebralution's portfolio. In April 2017, Thielen bought the company back from Warner together with Lazimbat and two other music managers, Christoph Ellinghaus from City Slang and Konrad von Löhneysen from Embassy of Music .

The company marketed over 1,000 labels and audio book publishers worldwide in 2019. On December 4, 2019, GEMA announced that it had acquired a majority stake of 75.1 percent in Zebralution. As a collecting society for music, GEMA represents the copyrights of around 74,000 members (composers, lyricists, music publishers) and over two million rights holders worldwide. Zebralution continues to operate as an independent company in Berlin under the umbrella of GEMA. The owners of Zebralution are still shareholders. Thielen and Lazimbat remained managing directors.

In addition, Thielen has been a partner in the Stereo Deluxe Rec. Label since 2005 and was the manager of the musicians Michael Kersting and Cosmo Klein . In 2016, he founded the audio book publisher Finch & Zebra together with Sabine Buß, the former program and later publishing director at Random House Audio , which published Moby's autobiography Porcelain and Han Kang's Die Vegetarianin , the winner of the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 . The audio book on I hate this Internet by Jarett Kobek , read by Christian Ulmen , was also published by Finch & Zebra. Thielen also entered the podcast business with zebra-audio.net .

Kurt Thielen was a board member of the German International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) from 1998 to 2003 and from 2005 to 2007 .

In October 2018, Thielen was named "Audiobook Person of the Year 2018" by the IG Hörbuch of the Börsenverein .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Kurt Thielen - indiepedia.de. Retrieved February 14, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Rough Trade Distribution | About us. Retrieved February 14, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Four shareholders pull together in Zebralution. In: Musikwoche.de. April 26, 2017, accessed January 13, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Zebralution independent again / Once Warner Music and back. In: Börsenblatt. April 7, 2017, accessed January 13, 2020 .
  5. ^ GEMA Society for Musical Performance and Mechanical Reproduction Rights: Zebralution. Retrieved January 13, 2020 .
  6. ↑ GEMA gives details on the Zebralution deal. In: Musikwoche.de. December 4, 2019, accessed January 13, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Finch & Zebra - About us. In: Finch & Zebra. Retrieved February 17, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Jonas Kiß: Kurt Thielen is "Audiobook Man of the Year". In: Musikwoche.de. October 16, 2018, accessed January 13, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Thielen, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH 20th century