TikTok hires triple j’s own Ollie Wards as Director of Music

TikTok has tapped triple j icon Ollie Wards as their first local Director of Music for Australia and New Zealand as a part of their growth strategy.

TikTok, the short-form mobile video application has announced that triple j legend Ollie Wards will be joining them after his ten-year career at triple j to be a part of their growth strategy across Australia and New Zealand to build the platform’s powerful impact on music.

Ollie Wards will be joining TikTok come the end of the month with a play to drive the music strategy within TikTok to oversee both emerging and iconic artists, and how they play a role in the ever-growing TikTok community.

As well as this, Wards will foster relationships with local talents, managers, labels, and distributors in order to produce campaigns and build the careers of artists across both New Zealand and Australia, which will see him forge TikTok’s home in the music scene.

This will be a bit of a change of pace for Wards, as with triple j, he’s been across being the national youth broadcaster, a breakfast show producer, and jumped to Program Director in 2012 and Network Head in 2016.

On the new career, Wards noted that “TikTok has become a real force in music discovery for audiences locally and around the world,” and that with such a great amount of talent in both Australia, and his native New Zealand, “there’s a massive opportunity for artists to be discovered and connect with fans on TikTok.”

Continuing on, he noted that he’s excited to be in this position: “I’ll probably not be creating my own dance videos though, I don’t think that’d help anyone!”

General Manger of TikTok Australia and New Zealand Lee Hunter noted that with “Ollie’s wealth of experience” he knows that he’s “the right leader” for this role at TikTok.

“Music is a special part of TikTok’s creative DNA and here in Australia, we’ve seen some amazing local artists catch their break by leaning into the platform’s celebration of originality, creativity and our global user base.

“With Ollie’s wealth of experience, I know he’s the right leader to build TikTok’s place in discovery and support of emerging local artists and fostering strong, long term partnerships with the local music industry. I look forward to supporting Ollie’s vision for TikTok talent across the Tasman and watching how this further inspires the creativity of our local community.”

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.