Senior Copyright Manager, Music Publishing

This is a senior, hands-on leadership role for someone who can bring structure, consistency, and accountability to a fast-scaling copyright operation.

Responsibilities

• Database Ownership: Own the standards and quality bar for copyright data integrity across our core systems — ensuring the Coordinator team's day-to-day work is accurate, complete, and delivered on time, and stepping in to resolve issues that require senior technical or contractual judgement.
• Technical Leadership: Maintain deep expertise in copyright registration standards and systems, acting as the escalation point for technical or data issues beyond the team's day-to-day scope.
• Industry Foresight: Stay ahead of emerging industry standards, tools, and infrastructure, proactively recommending adoption ahead of the market.
• Onboarding Standards: Set and enforce clean-data standards for all new catalogue and client onboarding, ensuring the team's onboarding work meets agreed data quality thresholds before anything moves to active status.
• Global Registration Accuracy: Ensure the team's registration of newly onboarded works at primary global collection societies happens accurately and on schedule, holding the team to clear turnaround expectations.
• Metadata Standards: Set the standard for best-in-class metadata across internal and partner systems, and hold the team accountable for closing match-rate and identifier gaps at scale.
• Conflict & Dispute Resolution: Ensure copyright data conflicts and disputes are resolved within clear turnaround targets, keeping other teams informed throughout and stepping in personally on complex or escalated cases.
• Process & Automation: Champion automation and batch-based registration processes to reduce manual error and increase throughput, and ensure the team consistently uses data-health reporting tools as the standard way of tracking quality.
• Process Efficiency & AI Tooling: Identify opportunities to streamline copyright and metadata workflows, including through the appropriate use of AI-assisted tools, and drive rollout of process improvements across the team.
• Catalogue Enrichment: Ensure ongoing enrichment of the legacy catalogue happens to schedule and to standard, maximising accuracy and platform matching.
• Cue Sheet Operations: Ensure cue sheet creation and delivery happens accurately and on time, driving the team toward greater automation and reliability.
• Team Leadership: Manage and develop the Copyright team, setting clear priorities and accountability, and ensuring consistent, proactive reporting on progress. Maintain clear ownership and follow-through on open items across review cycles.
• Tooling & Infrastructure: Partner with the wider Publishing team to ensure tools and processes are properly supported, secure, and scalable beyond any one individual.
• Stakeholder Management: Set clear expectations and timelines with internal teams, agents, and sub-publishers, escalating proactively where delivery is at risk.

Requirements

• Significant prior experience in music publishing copyright administration, including people management experience.
• Deep working knowledge of copyright management.
• Proven experience navigating complex, multi-territory contracts and rights structures.
• Experience liaising with global PROs/CMOs, including less commonly covered societies alongside the majors.
• Experience with copyright management software and databases.
• Track record of building scalable, systemised processes and holding a team accountable to clear performance standards.
• Strong Excel skills and comfort managing large, complex datasets.
• Comfort using AI tools to improve workflow efficiency.
• Strong people leadership and stakeholder management skills, with the confidence to have direct conversations about performance and priority.