Introducing, Sveinung Rindal, Norway Country Manager
Since I first heard Michael Jackson’s Bad in 1987, I began to understand that music was a profession – and some years later, I realized I had a tiny little chance to be a part of the music business, at least the Norwegian music business. I had my first job in a record store in Oslo before the fall of 1991, the year of Nevermind, The Black Album, Use Your Illusion, Ten and Dangerous (you can probably sort out the artists, all of which have been important to me). I couldn’t imagine anything more valuable than working with music.
Ten years later, I ran my own record store in a record chain in Norway, and my taste of music had grown to include acts so diverse as Tool and Pearl Jam (my favorite rock bands), Motorpsycho (favorite Norwegian band, check them out!), Prince (I truly miss him), Vanessa Paradis (favorite French artist) and Daft Punk (well French too, only Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger).
Sometime during 2008, I started wondering why I bought (and sold) CD’s just to rip them and move the files over to my iPod. Luckily, I got the chance of entering the digital music business shortly after. You may have heard about the streaming service called WiMP (I know, the strongest name there is). We launched in 2010, and even though it was an underdog to Spotify, we had serious impact in the Northern part of Europe and a lot of early features that probably influenced other services too. We relaunched as TIDAL in 2014 and for the next two years, I had the overall responsibility for all editorial and storefront activities in the service. The highlight of all those years came with the launch of Beyoncé’s Lemonade film and album. My team made great editorial features supporting the album, which I am very proud of to this day, and the album itself is outstanding. After seven years of editorial work, I started looking for new opportunities, and for the last 14 months, I’ve been working in music management.
I am 42 years old, and I have a beautiful wife and two soon-to-be teenager boys (11 and 12). They are my hobbies these days, as all the spare time I have goes to support their handball, marching band, theatre group and gospel choir activities. Music defines our family too, and we took our kids with us on honeymoon in 2014, to the Americana cruise called Cayamo with family favorites as John Prine, Lyle Lovett, Kacey Musgraves and Drew Holcomb. Our best week as a family for sure. I’m lucky to see they join my interest in going to concerts. As a lover of live music, I’ve got around 750 attending concerts on setlist.fm. If anyone beats that, let me know!
I’m very excited and motivated to join The Orchard, a company I’ve been doing great business with since 2010. To build up The Orchard in Norway, is an honour and serious business. And still, I can’t imagine anything more valuable as working with music. Let’s get to work!
