Ollie Wards Confirms Departure as TikTok Australia & New Zealand Director of Music

TikTok Australia and New Zealand Director of Music Ollie Wards is stepping down after over five years in the role.

Wards revealed the news in a LinkedIn post yesterday (December 11th), writing “I’m hanging up my headphones at TikTok!”

He listed some of his achievements in the role “since being one of the first of TikTok’s music team in 2020,” including “leading growth of music from a handful to most contemporary artists now onboarded” and “[c]reating the first TkTok x TV simulcast concerts.”

“Dozens of high quality live music productions like the first TikTok stadium livestream with Six60 when NZ was the only place out of lockdown…” he also mentioned, as well as “[p]roducing TikTok Awards performances and the music award, festival partnerships, album campaigns…music promotion and taking AUNZ songs to the world…”

Wards continued: “But rather than ‘what’ I was part of, it’s the ‘how’ I’m most proud of.

“One of the first things I did at TikTok was create ‘liner notes’. A list of 11 guiding principles (turn it up to 11!) to work by. A set of stated values we’d aim to live up to in service of our artists, music industry and TikTok audience… In a world of increasingly opaque pathways for artists, pitch portals, helpdesks and bots – hopefully that approach of being a human amongst it all helped. Though maybe being ‘human’ is the minimum.”

He made sure to thank some of his closest colleagues over the last five-and-a-bit years: “Over the years those liner notes were reworked and bought into by the excellent team I had the privilege of leading and learning from; Rochelle Flack, Govind Sandhu, Tait McGregor, Chris Vaughan, Nathan Wood.

“A huge thank you to Lee Hunter for backing me from the beginning. Still the most ‘Ted Lasso’ leader I’ve had.

I’ve also loved working with music leaders from across the world: Constantin WU Haoran, Li Chen, Frida Zhang, Tom Mee, James Underwood, Corey Sheridan, Paul Hourican and special thanks for this year of global thinking Peter Qi.

“I’m grateful to all of my colleagues across the floor and oceans too. Especially my day 1 bud Simon Bates!”

Wards concluded his post by revealing “I’m open for business” in 2026.

“I’m all about creative processes and connecting content with audiences, whatever the format,” he wrote.