Mercury Records is expanding its executive team amid the broader restructure of Universal Music Group’s labels, the company announced today (March 13). The news comes as the label, which had been operating as an imprint of Republic Records since its relaunch in April 2022, has a hand in the top two albums on the Billboard 200 this week — Morgan Wallen’s One Thing At a Time (Big Loud/Mercury/Republic) and Noah Kahan’s Stick Season (Mercury/Republic).
Now, with the reorganization of UMG’s East Coast labels under Republic co-founder/CEO Monte Lipman, Mercury joins Def Jam, Island and Republic as part of the larger group, with a central organizational hub called Republic Corps. helping each label with marketing, promotions, publicity and legal support. And Mercury president Tyler Arnold and general manager Ben Adelson have made three appointments to their team in the new operation.
Alex Coslov, a marketing veteran who had worked across both Mercury and Republic, will now be working full time at Mercury as its new executive vp, while Republic senior vp of media Marisa Bianco slides over to work on Mercury full time, while also reporting in to Republic Corps. head of media Joseph Carozza. Additionally, the label hired Mario Vazquez as vp of audience and streaming, who will work at Mercury while also reporting in to Republic Corps. executive vp of global commerce and digital strategy Kevin Lipson.
“Ben and I are thrilled to welcome Alex, Marisa and Mario to our team at Mercury Records,” Arnold said in a statement. “From day one, our goal has been to foster a creative, supportive and forward-thinking home for our artists to thrive. We are incredibly grateful to expand our team with this talented group of executives who will help further that mission as we usher in our next chapter.”
Arnold and Adelson are themselves Republic veterans, emerging from the A&R department at the label, and when the imprint relaunched in 2022 it came with several artists and partnerships that Arnold and Adelson had signed at Republic, including Post Malone, Kahan, James Bay, Lord Huron, Jeremy Zucker and others, as well as Republic’s relationship with Big Loud for Wallen, which Arnold had originally brokered. The label is also home to Stephen Sanchez, Zayn and AJR, among others.
