FUGA's Nordic Business Development Manager , Ebba Guhnby was recently interviewed as part of leading Swedish music publication Musikindustrin's '4 Quick Questions' series.
Read the interview below or in Swedish on the Musikindustrin website here.
Tell us more about Ebba Guhnby, who are you?
I feel that this question can take so many different routes... But if we focus on my professional life, today I represent the distribution service FUGA in the Nordics, in the role of a Business Development Manager. For someone outside the music industry, I usually describe my job as a type of sales role where I have the luxury of working with a fantastic product, within an incredibly passionate industry. If I look back on previous experiences, I have almost always worked with sales in one way or another; whether it was by selling additional items in the checkout at Mcdonald's, refrigerators at the tech store ONOFF to presenting new initiatives to artists and record labels at Spotify's then-called Label Relations department."
What is FUGA and what are you focused on here in Sweden?
FUGA is a music distributor owned by Downtown with HQ in Amsterdam, which places great emphasis on the technical platform and other SaaS services. FUGA was founded in 2006 but has not until recent years become more of a "household name" in the Nordics, probably in connection with our starting to offer additional services such as marketing and physical distribution. The focus for us here is to take care of our current partners, but of course, also educate and become an obvious option for e.g. the record company that wants a partner one can grow with.
What would you say are the biggest changes in the digital distribution of music in recent years?
I am a firm believer in competition and therefore find it very exciting that more distributors choose to hire in the Nordics, thereby creating alternatives for content providers. The competition has also meant that we distributors have had to diversify! Develop new tools and services to help the independent market to stand strong, but also open up for tailoring our agreements to their needs.
What do you see in the streaming and distribution crystal ball in the coming years? How do you think things will develop?
I went back and forth with my friend ChatGPT about this and we dug into the personalization of streaming services. I'm not sure if it will democratize and open doors for more or if the individualization will make it harder to stand out in the crowd when fewer "touch points" are curated. One thing that is certain is that we need to stay creative and on one's toes to be up to date within the ever-changing music industry.
