VP Global Digital Rights Management, Warner Chappell Music

VP Global Digital Rights Management, Warner Chappell Music

Warner Chappell Production Music is a global leader in music production and creative supervision. In the newly created role of VP of Global Digital Rights Management at WCM, you'll play a crucial role in executing our global digital rights strategy.

A little bit about our team:

The VP Global Digital Rights Management reports into the EVP Global Rights Management, based in London, who leads WCM’s global strategy to improve income collection and maximise distributions to songwriters. In your department, you will work alongside colleagues in copyright, royalties, income tracking and audit services, teams who work together around the world to make sure that all income for all usage is accounted for accurately, transparently and in the shortest time-frames possible.

The role will act as a liaison between WCM’s digital licensing, finance, administration and legal teams in Asia, Central & South America, London and the United States.

Your role:

You'll lead on the operationalisation of WCM’s global deals with digital partners, including YouTube, Spotify, TikTok, Meta and Apple, evaluate third-party partners to maximise service quality and help us monetise our digital rights efficiently. You will actively input into negotiations, and monitor each phase of deal implementation following execution, ensuring that WCM, its licensees and partners meet all requirements for reporting, distributions and data exchanges. You will drive collaboration across WCM’s digital licensing, finance, legal and administration departments to maximise the value of our digital rights, and be an agent of change by championing digital rights management transformation and promoting data quality initiatives. Join WCM and be at the heart of an industry-leading team, where your impact will resonate globally and transform the music landscape.

This position is hybrid, and can be based out of WCM’s offices in Europe, London or the United States. Travel is also expected to be agreed with your manager.

Here you’ll get to:

Create Global Impact:

• Play a pivotal role in executing WCM's global digital rights management strategy, contributing innovative ideas and input to influence the company's direction, whilst always prioritising the interests of WCM’s songwriters.
• Operationalise the terms agreed in WCM's global digital deals. Ensure the commercial terms of WCM's global digital licences are correctly implemented by all processing partners (including ICE, BMAT and APRA/AMCOS), direct licensees (including TikTok, Meta and others) and WCM departments.
• Evaluate the operational services provided by existing and prospective third party partners, including UGC content identification and claiming services, digital processing partners, matching and conflict resolution services.
• Monitor and manage partner performance of KPIs and SLAs, ensuring that WCM receives the highest levels of service. Establish processes to regularly review partner performance, working with WCM’s digital licensing, finance and administration departments as needed.
• Oversee the delivery of all WCM song and recording metadata to processing partners and digital service partners (DSPs).
• Establish best practices for digital rights management that will be adopted by all deal signing offices.
• Lead on the implementation of metadata enrichment, data quality and data exchange initiatives with partners, work toward tangible outcomes to improve the quality of usage reporting provided to WCM and our processing partners.
• Proactively partner with global collection societies on how to monetise digital rights more efficiently, identifying opportunities to improve data exchanges, data quality, and claiming, invoicing and distribution practices.

Be An Agent for Change:

• Champion initiatives that drive digital rights management transformation, positioning WCM as a leader in the industry.
• Participate as a key contributor in external working groups and establish WCM as an advocate for improving data quality initiatives pertaining to the digital supply chain and the monetisation of digital rights.
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement, working with colleagues to adopt best practices and leverage new technologies.
• Engage with external stakeholders and industry experts to stay abreast of emerging trends and incorporate best practices into WCM's digital operations.
• Partner with WMG’s recorded music division to identify opportunities to maximise the value of songs recorded and digitally released by WMG labels.

Lead with Impact:

• Represent digital rights management in off-sites, regional business reviews, and budget meetings as needed, providing insights and contributing ideas.
• Collaborate with senior leaders to identify and address business challenges, ensuring alignment with organisational goals.
• Drive the creation and implementation of training, educational, and knowledge-sharing initiatives focused on digital rights management ensuring accessibility for all WCM employees.
• From time to time, participate as a guest speaker at external panels and speaking engagements.

About you:

• You have extensive experience in digital rights management, ideally gained within a music publisher, collective management organisation (CMO) or digital processing partner.
• You possess a deep understanding of data quality initiatives, and the end to end digital supply chain. You understand the basis on which music rights are licensed to DSPs, the key commercial terms of those licences and how those terms are to be implemented by digital processing partners, CMOs and music publishers.
• You have experience of translating deal terms into finance, copyright, royalty and processing systems.
• You understand the end to end processes of how songs are identified in usage reports provided by DSPs and processing partners, how that usage is claimed and invoiced and reported back to rights holders.
• You have a keen interest in data and technology and keep abreast of advances in usage matching, music recognition technology and royalty distributions, with a broad awareness of existing and emerging third party services.
• You enjoy analysing and evaluating third-party partners, ensuring they meet high performance standards and KPIs.
• You are passionate about leveraging new technologies and best practices to drive continuous improvement in digital operations.
• You’re a born team player, with a history of fostering collaboration and professional growth among team members.
• You are numerical, analytical and possess advanced Excel skills, including Power Query and Power Pivot.

We’d love it if you also had:

• You have experience working with global collection societies and a deep understanding of their processes.
• You will possess advanced knowledge of UGC content identification and claiming services.
• You are passionate about public speaking and have experience as a guest speaker at industry panels or events.
• You have familiarity with financial management and budgeting within a digital operations context.
• You are adept in using SQL, Alteryx, Tableau and data warehouse environments.

Next Step:

Please CLICK HERE to see this role on our own website, and apply.