The global digital collection society said on Tuesday (September 29) that Ericsson will leave the role effective January 1, 2027, after more than a decade in charge.
He will become Chairman of the Board at amra.
Robin Davies, amra’s Chief Operating Officer, has been named its next Chief Executive Officer, taking over on the same date.
amra is the digital collection society owned by Kobalt, which was acquired by Primary Wave Music from Francisco Partners in a deal that closed on July 7.
That transaction covered Kobalt‘s worldwide operations, its catalog of owned copyrights, and amra. Terms were not disclosed, though MBW understands the deal was worth around USD $1.5 billion. Brookfield, a strategic partner to Primary Wave since 2022, co-invested.
Ericsson joined Kobalt Music Group in October 2013 as President, Society Relations, tasked with managing the company’s relationships with collection societies and digital services worldwide. Kobalt bought the American Mechanical Rights Agency the following year, and relaunched it in 2015 as the American Music Rights Association, a global digital mechanical and performing rights society, with Ericsson as its CEO.
Before joining Kobalt, he was CFO and later Deputy CEO of Swedish collection society STIM. From 2007 until 2009, he was Managing Director of ICE (International Copyright Enterprise), then a joint venture between STIM and the UK’s PRS for Music.
amra says its gross collections have grown from a seven-figure sum in 2014 to “well into nine figures” in 2026, and that more than 45 publishers around the world now use it. The last publicly available annual revenue figure for the company, covering the 12 months to the end of June 2022, was over USD $110 million.
The society says it licenses digital rights directly in more than 200 territories outside the United States, with direct digital collections covering markets including Southeast Asia, India, Australia, Brazil, and Japan.
“amra will be in good hands with Tomas’ ongoing guidance and with Robin, who has been with amra and the Kobalt organization for a decade, at the helm. We expect amra to continue to grow as it serves the global music publishing community.”
“We are so grateful for Tomas’ vision and leadership as he and his team have built amra into one of the industry’s most innovative and transformational organizations,” said Laurent Hubert, CEO of Kobalt. “We are also looking forward to Tomas continuing to contribute to the business as Chairman.
“amra will be in good hands with Tomas’ ongoing guidance and with Robin, who has been with amra and the Kobalt organization for a decade, at the helm. We expect amra to continue to grow as it serves the global music publishing community.”
“It has been an extraordinary experience and truly the honor of my career to build amra over these past 13 years into the global enterprise it is today,” said Ericsson. “I’m grateful to Laurent for his belief in our mission, and for Robin and the rest of the team who have made the company what it is today.
“I also want to thank Willard Ahdritz who I met in 2010 when the idea of amra was hatched. I’m looking forward to contributing to the organization as its Chairman for many years to come.”
Announcing that agreement on March 23, Ahdritz thanked Hubert, Jeannette Perez, Ericsson, and Catrin Drabble by name.
“It is a huge privilege to lead amra into its next chapter,” said Davies. “I have worked alongside Tomas for more than a decade, and I am enormously grateful for his leadership, friendship and trust, and for the opportunity to help build what amra has become today.
“We have an exceptional team, a proven model and a relentless ambition to keep challenging how our industry works, expanding what amra can deliver and creating more value for songwriters and music publishers around the world.”
He began his career in investment banking at Barclays Capital before moving into management consulting at PwC, where he led the original work designing amra’s separation from the Kobalt group. He then joined Kobalt Music Group, running business operations and strategy, before moving across to amra in 2019.
