Origin Sweden Years active 1992–present | Genres Eurodance Name Johan Lagerlof | |
Occupation(s) music producer, songwriter, music executive Labels Stockholm Records
Ache Records
X5 Music Group Associated acts Bass Nation, Markoolio, Flexx, Nana Hedin, Laila Bagge, Cool James and Black Teacher, Elephant and Castle, Xn'X, Waveframe, Kid Commando | ||
Johan Henrik Lagerlof (born February 27, 1971, Sweden) is a music producer, songwriter, entrepreneur, and music executive. Best known as CEO and co-founder of X5 Music Group, prior to that he co-founded the mobile phone media companies Mobilehits.com and Plus Four Six AB. As part of the production duo Bass Nation with Jan Nordlund, he has worked with artists such as Markoolio, Nana Hedin, Laila Bagge, Cool James and Black Teacher. He has produced or co-written ten platinum-selling albums.
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Early life, music career
Johan Henrik Lagerlof was born in Sweden on 27 February 1971. In 1992, at the age of 21, he began working at Stockholm Records as an inhouse producer and songwriter. He and Jan Nordlund soon joined together into the production team Bass Nation, operating under Bass Nation Communications. Lagerlof also became a co-owner of United Nation Publishing Company with Nordlund, which in 2004 partnered with Bonnier Music Publishing.
Through Bass Nation and Stockholm Records he's done production work for a number of rap and eurodance artists. In 1993 Bass Nation produced and helped write the single "Wake Up" by Flexx, followed by more singles for Flexx the following three years. Flexx was a Swedish eurodance act that consisted of rappers Chris Ljung and Malvern Mandengu and singers such as Kajsa, Lotten Andersson, Nana Hedin, and Laila Bagge. Before Flexx disbanded in 1996, Bass Nation released three Flexx remixes in the mid-1990s.
In 1995 Lagerlof and Nordlund produced the album Zooming You by Cool James and Black Teacher. A year later the duo created the project Waveframe and released the ambient track "H20." Also in 1996 they released the track "Fuck U" under the name of Xn'X, a collaboration which featured the two former rappers of Flexx. The track would be rereleased by Flexx under the name "Shake U All."
He and Nordlund founded the group Elephant & Castle in 1997, again with members of Flexx, and Lagerlof has also done producing and/or songwriting work for C.Aarme, Eurobeat, Groove Jet, Pop Nation, Wavefram, Blumchen, Leila K, Boy George, E-Type, Dromhus, Tess, Caramell and Balsam Boys, and Cool James and Black Teacher.
Bass Nation also did work for Swedish rapper Markoolio, contributing to his 2000 summer hit "More Targets" in 2000. Lagerlof co-wrote the music and lyrics to Markoolio's track "Vilse I Skogen" in 2003, which peaked at #1 in Sweden for 16 weeks. As of 2013, Lagerlof has co-written 10 platinum records and 2 of the top singles in Swedish chart history.
Mobilehits.com
In 2000 Lagerlaf and Nordlund founded Mobilehits, the first phone melodies company in Sweden, whose projects included allowing ringtones to be downloaded in conjunction with color pictures. Mobilehits went on to become "the leading supplier of music and entertainment-related content for mobile telephones in Europe," with more than 600,000 members in Sweden and about 1,100,000 total members by 2002. In 2003 they sold the company to Aspiro, which is listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange.
Plus Four Six
After the sale of Mobilehits, in the middle of 2003 Largerlof and his business partner Nordlund started the company Plus Four Six (+46). Launched in collaboration with BMG, it introduced a new format for music on mobile phones, called MP ( Music Pack ). An MP is a package containing screensavers, a ring tone, personal greetings, short audio clips and mobile wallpapers. +46 became a major mobile marketing company in Scandinavia, with 30% market share and clients including Universal, Sony, Warner Music, EMI, Nokia, and Samsung.
Global Media Bank
Lagerlof co-founded Global Media Bank, which provided technical services and music stream platforms to Sony Ericcson, Spotify, and Netcom.
X5 Music Group
In 2003 Lagerlof co-founded X5 Music Group in Stockholm, Sweden with Daniel Backstrom, and Stefan Enberg. Lagerlof became CEO. X5 was created as a digital-only label with classical music as a focus, and they began repackaging the catalogs of about 50 other companies into compilations. The New York Times stated "To attract classical neophytes, X5’s collections have search-engine-friendly titles and simple, self-explanatory cover art." About how they selected classical music, Lagerlof stated “We were pop guys, and maybe that was good. We weren’t experts. We created products that we could easily find in stores and easily understand.”
The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music compilation went on to be #1 on iTunes' Classical Albums chart for over a year. X5 expanded into the United States in 2009, and Scott Ambrose Reilly was hired as North American CEO, with Lagerlof remaining chief executive of the overall company. In 2011 the label began branching into genres such as folk, bluegrass, blues, and jazz. Later that year X5 released The Greatest Video Game Music. Performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. it debuted at #23 on the Billboard 200, with a sequel released in 2012.
Also in 2012 X5 launched Classify, an app created with Spotify that helps music browsers discover classical music, with apps for other genres following. X5 announced in April 2013 that it had started U5, a joint venture with the music conglomerate Universal Music Group that gave X5 access to over 100,000 of Universal’s songs. U5 produces digital compilation albums, curating and releasing more than 50 per month. From 2009 to 2013 X5 had 24 albums on the Billboard 200, and the company was named one of the Red Herring "Top 100 Most Innovative Companies in Europe" in 2013.