Mariana Voronina is CEO and co-owner of Best Music, an independent Ukrainian label, and a member of the Ukrainian music companies association SPILNA. In the ninth interview of IMPALA’s Faces of the Independent Sector series, co-funded by the European Union and tied to the association’s 25th anniversary, she describes how Ukraine’s music industry keeps going through war, and what independence means in practice.
From law to running a label
Best Music works with artists and rights holders at different stages, from distribution, publishing and rights management to full PR and legal support. Voronina came into the business through law, starting as an assistant to an intellectual property lawyer who worked with artists and labels. She soon decided that advising the industry from outside was not enough.
“This year my business partner and I are celebrating ten years of our independence. For us the word has a very literal meaning: ten years ago we stopped being employees of another company and started our own independent label.”
For her, independence is first the freedom to decide where the company goes, who it works with and which ideas it backs. It is also a responsibility to her team and to every artist and rights holder who trusts the label with their music.
Speed as the independent advantage
Voronina sees speed as the sector’s biggest strength.
“We’re far more mobile in our decisions and can get from an idea to making it happen very quickly. There’s no long chain of corporate approvals. Today we can come up with a new PR campaign for an artist, tomorrow launch an industry conference or join the work on proposed changes to Ukrainian legislation, and the day after that decide to create our own music show project and start building it.”
Working through the war
She says challenges cannot be discussed outside the context of the war, which touches every part of the work. Teams operate through daily shelling and power cuts, rebuild when colleagues leave to defend Ukraine, and deal with an unstable economy, a shortage of people and a legal system going through its own transformation.
Even so, she says the industry has not paused. It keeps releasing music, running concerts, creating projects and planning ahead, which she calls the most accurate definition of resilience in the independent sector.
What the market needs
Voronina wants the industry to grow stronger as a whole, not only as individual companies, through professional associations such as SPILNA, which is a member of IMPALA. She calls for a shared voice for independents in Ukraine and abroad, a more active role in shaping intellectual property law, and lessons from European colleagues on collective rights management.
She also wants global digital platforms to expand their presence and marketing in Ukraine, so listeners choose legal streaming over pirate sources. That includes the same platform features available in other markets and more local editorial playlists and discovery tools. Her goal is a move from a market of individual players to a structured, competitive ecosystem.
Advice and priorities
Her advice to newcomers is to work hard, accept mistakes as lessons and keep changing with an industry that moves fast.
“Never wait for the moment when you know everything before you start. Starting is how you learn.”
- Best Music Day: the educational event, held for the fifth time, traditionally on October 1, International Music Day.
- Value Music: a social project aimed at changing how music is treated in Ukraine, explaining to listeners that music is worth consuming legally and to businesses that using it means fair pay for rights holders, including through collective management.
- Best Hit: a planned YouTube project in which well-known Ukrainian artists swap hits and record their own versions of songs Ukrainians already love.
- Industry work: developing SPILNA, strengthening links with the European sector and working on legislation and collective management reform.
Her shared task for the next 12 months, she says, is the minimum one: to hold on, and build everything else in parallel.
