Universal Music UK’s director of digital Paul Smernicki has left the company.
Smernicki’s departure comes some 17 years after joining the company. He has yet to announce details of his next role.
Speaking to Music Week about his decision to leave the company, Smernicki said: "My 17 years at Universal were wonderful, and it was a really tough decision to move on - possibly the toughest I've ever had to make. But the time felt right and there was a window of opportunity so with incredible support from them - David J [Joseph] in particular - I decided to make a leap.
"It's a bit circle of life that you reached me through Selina [Webb] - she hired me back in 1999 so I'm forever grateful. I got to work with some of my favourite artists ever (Ian Brown and QOTSA are the standouts there), made friends for life and I reckon all that time there working with so many extremely high calibre people over the years has given me extremely sound foundations to build a new thing upon, and it's Universal standards I'll judge myself on."
On his future plans, Smernicki told us: "I'm not quite ready to announce much detail on that yet (working on some detail for a star signing!) but music will be at it's core and I'm also talking to Universal about a couple of projects so I won't be a stranger to the building.
Universal Music UK has yet to appoint a replacement for Smernicki.
