Riccardo Loda has been promoted to become Head of A&R at Warner Chappell Music Italy, part of the music publishing arm of Warner Music Group. He will continue to be based in Milan and report to Santiago Menéndez-Pidal, President, Southern Europe, Warner Chappell Music.

Loda has worked as an A&R Manager at Warner Chappell Music since 2018, joining the publisher from BMG Rights Management, where he had been part of the A&R team since 2012.

While at WCM Italy, he has signed rappers, producers and songwriters including Shiva and Tha Supreme, as well as Lazza, who had the biggest selling album of 2022 in Italy with Sirio, and Rhove, who had the second biggest selling single of the year with ‘Shakerando’.

Riccardo Loda says: “I’m so pleased to have been asked to step up into this new role. It’s an exciting time in Italian music, with the local hip-hop scene in particular fizzing with energy. There’s also renewed global interest in Italian artists and songwriters, so I think you’ll see a lot more international collabs in the year ahead.”

Santiago Menéndez-Pidal adds: “Riccardo is a brilliant A&R exec who has built great relationships with artists, managers and labels across Italy and beyond over the last decade. He combines a sharp sense of what’s happening on the music scene with the management knowhow to deliver complex and creative projects.”