Jeremy Sirota to Step Down as Merlin CEO

Jeremy Sirota will leave Merlin at the end of the year, the licensing organization announced on Tuesday (May 13). 

Sirota has served as CEO since 2020, guiding Merlin as it steers digital music licensing for independent labels and distributors. During Sirota’s tenure, Merlin reached new deals with Apple, Audiomack, Canva, Peloton, Snap, Twitch and more.

In a statement, Darius Van Arman, who is both chairperson of Merlin and co-founder/co-owner of Secretly Group, called Sirota “an extraordinary CEO” who brought “great focus, tremendous energy and brilliant thinking to one of the most important and challenging roles within the independent community.” 

“His work and leadership has Merlin more prepared than ever to manage an increasingly complex music licensing landscape and to achieve our mission of enabling greater independence for all Merlin members,” Van Arman continued. 

In his own statement, Sirota called helming Merlin “the privilege of a lifetime.” He added that the organization continues “to be the most important organization representing independents” and that it “has a bright future.”

Sirota previously worked as a tech lawyer before spending nine years at Warner Music Group and then jumping to Facebook Music.

That experience “gave me the ability to relate to people at different levels in the business, whether it’s a product manager at a digital platform, or an engineer who’s now a founder of a startup, or it’s a member who runs a metal label,” he told Billboard last year. “I’ve always been on the service side, and that’s always been the through line.”

During Sirota’s time as CEO, Merlin added over 100 members. In addition, the organization launched Merlin Engage, a program to mentor the next generation of women executives, and Merlin Insights, to help members analyze the deluge of data that’s available in world of streaming. 

“We now have a data operations team to make sure that all trends data is being delivered in the right format,” Sirota explained in 2024. “Our market share on some of these platforms is significant — more than just the 15% we talk about. So we have this incredible wealth of data. We have the ability to pull out interesting stories that help our members — things they don’t know because they’re not on the ground.”