Tina Funk Talks To BIMM Berlin Students

Tina Funk has a seriously impressive and very enviable music industry CV. Starting out her career as a journalist, Tina then went on to her first music industry job at Virgin Schallplatten, the German subsidiary of Virgin Records, followed over the years by prominent positions at Mute Records, V2 and EMI. She later set up Creative Lobby GmbH, a successful management consultancy firm, and has more recently joined Vevo to help launch Vevo Germany.

The students were roundly impressed with Tina’s breadth of experience in a number of very senior roles and Tina was more than happy to share the story of how she got there with the class and with BIMM host, Jeff Colllier. Tina’s work has seen her play instrumental roles in the founding of several influential music outlets. She helped set up V2, the Virgin ‘indie’ imprint label, back in 1997 and soon after helped to establish an affiliate for Mute Records in Berlin.

This led to Tina joining the EMI label family and becoming Managing Director of a new division for Virgin/Labels/Mute. Along the way, Tina has worked alongside an astonishing array of artists including Depeche Mode, The Rolling Stones, Herbert Grönemeyer, Pharell, Daft Punk, Nick Cave and many more. She is now part of the team helping to turn Vevo into the number one music video hub online.

As she spoke, Tina shared her thoughts on the role of women in the music industry from her very well-informed perspective and was keen to encourage the class to think outside of normal parameters and embrace new innovative approaches when it came to their own careers in music. The class definitely appreciated Tina’s upfront sincerity and make-it-happen attitude. Songwriting student Fredrik Blank told us:

“Tina has massive experience in the music business and seems to be a down to earth person. She´s not into ‘business-management’ talking, she seems to be more into actually doing and achieving things, telling it the way it is, and the way she experienced it.”

We hope that all of our high-profile guest speakers can excite our undergraduates with the possibility of their own music futures – Tina certainly has!