Manager, UK Royalties & Audit Services, Warner Chappell Music
Locations: GBR – Electric Lighting Station, London
Time type: Full time
Job Description
At Warner Music Group, we’re a global collective of music makers and music lovers, tech innovators and inspired entrepreneurs, game-changing creatives and passionate team members. Here, we know that each talent makes our collective bolder and brighter. We are guided by four core principles that underpin everything we do across all our diverse businesses:
- Music is Everything: Music is our passion, and we can never get enough. Tastes, trends, and tech will change, but great artists and songwriters will always be our driving force.
- Global Growth, Local Expertise: Music is a global language. Through communication and collaboration, our success can come from anywhere and translate everywhere.
- Innovation and Insight: Pushing the boundaries requires the best information and the boldest imagination. We use both to create the future.
- Empowered by People: Like the artists we serve and the music they make, our differences make us stronger. This is a place where every talent can belong and build a career.
We remain committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. We know it fosters a culture where you can truly belong, contribute, and grow. We encourage applications from people of any age, gender identity, sex or sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion or belief, disability, and any other protected characteristic or identity.
Consider a career at WMG and get the best of both worlds – an innovative global music company that retains the creative spirit of a nimble independent.
Warner Chappell Music (WCM) is the music publishing division of Warner Music Group. We are interested in those who can join and contribute along our company’s values: Curiosity, Collaboration, and Commitment. We value input, ideas, and feedback from everyone at every level and the voices and contributions of every team member at WCM matter.
At WCM we put the songwriter first, offering high touch service to move the cultural dial across the globe. We want team members who have a service-oriented mindset and care about the collective work. We are searching for those who are comfortable thinking globally while leveraging local expertise. We are Warner Chappell Music – where songwriters are heard.
A little bit about our team
The UK Royalties and Audit Services Team sits in the UK Administration Department and is responsible for the timely and accurate accounting to our valued songwriters, performing an important role in completing the final step of the end to end music value chain at Warner Chappell UK.
The Team is responsible for all outbound UK Royalty Distributions including the delivery of all relevant SOX Internal Audit requirements; the effective management of all External UK Client Royalty Audits including extensive data gathering, analysis and audit settlement negotiations; upholding the high standards of UK Songwriter Relations from the UK Administration side, ensuring that we onboard new and existing signings in to our business and Client Portal, whilst providing the highest level of customer service by ensuring we respond to and resolve any queries in a timely manner.
This is a vital team central to the success of our business in the UK and Globally.
Your role
As UK Royalty Manager you will supervise a stellar team of two and report directly to the VP, European Regional Administration. You will be ultimately accountable for the delivery of all Royalties and Audit Services aspects the team is responsible for.
You are a confident and highly-organised Team Leader who can continue to shape our UK Royalty Department inclusive of Audit Services. With responsibility for the entire outbound distribution cycle of accountings to our UK signed songwriters, you will collaborate with our Finance, Royalty Processing, Income Tracking, UK Copyright and Affiliate office Administration teams to ensure that each step of the process remains on track.
You will continue to build strong relationships across our writer and client community and develop a customer-services orientated royalties team that delivers the very best in royalty and audit administration. As a key stakeholder to a SOX controlled set of processes, you will collaborate and build strong working relationships with Internal and External Auditors to ensure our SOX deliverables are always maintained as required.
You will be a lateral thinker confident in challenging the status quo and constructively think of solutions suitable for our teams and business.
Here you’ll get to
- Successfully manage all outbound royalty distributions to our UK signed songwriters.
- Be responsible for all stages of external client audits, including extensive data gathering, analysis of audit reports, and audit settlement negotiations.
- Manage current and future SOX controls relating to outbound distributions.
- Line manage direct reports, provide training, motivation, guidance, direction, encouragement to trouble-shoot queries, problem solve and work autonomously.
- Effectively monitor and communicate team priorities and workload, work towards achieving KPIs set with Department Head, and work as a Team to deliver against Company and Global Administration Targets.
- Create regular KPI and output reports, and weekly Team updates for the Department Head.
- Collaborate with colleagues across the business to improve efficiencies across all areas of administration including Income Tracking, Finance and Copyright.
- Ensure all pre/post-run distribution items are completed by the team in an effective, accurate and timely manner.
- Supervise the Client Onboarding of all new and existing signings to WCM by ensuring the team has provided Portal demos, introductions to our wider UK Admin team, and created earnings reports to existing songwriters where applicable.
- Ensure the effective administration of all necessary client file updates in our in-house system TANGO and the verifying of writer forms as part of our internal security measures.
- Be responsible for the cross training of team members in all responsibilities of the team, implementation and upkeep of succession plans and documentation and access of all tasks end to end.
- Manage the ingestion of financial transactions into our in-house copyright and royalty system Tango.
- Investigate, resolve and respond to complex royalty queries from songwriters and the business.
- Collaborate with colleagues to improve efficiencies across all areas of Administration, and contribute to ongoing training initiatives within the UK and wider Global Administration teams.
About you
- You have a passion for team leadership and an aptitude for management. You have prior experience of working in a managerial or supervisory capacity within Publishing Administration.
- You understand the end to end cycle of music publishing administration inclusive of the international society network, and have experience using copyright and royalty systems.
- You have excellent interpersonal skills and are confident in communicating with clients, colleagues and management.
- You have a high-level of numeracy and attention to detail.
- You have advanced Excel skills, including Power Pivot, Power Query, macros and financial formulae, and the ability to manipulate and extract detail from large data files.
- You have a detailed knowledge of the data file types routinely used to support both royalty ingestion and royalty outbound reporting (CRD/CSV/DIF/FLAT/TEXT).
- You are comfortable working autonomously and as part of a team.
- You collaborate and consult with peers to strengthen business practices and create better efficiencies across departments.
- You are meticulously organised and detail orientated, having previously worked in roles where a high level of accuracy and meeting tight deadlines is demanded.
- You enjoy multi-tasking and know how to employ effective time-management, prioritisation and planning techniques to complete quarterly cycles and projects to deadlines.
- You work well under pressure, remaining calm and productive when faced with difficult, complex or time sensitive situations.
- You are a critical thinker with the ability to join dots and think laterally.
- You are self-motivated and results-focused with a proven ability to improve performance and process.
We’d love it if you also had
- External audit experience having successfully managed client audits.
- Familiarity with SOX controls and ability to work with external Auditors.
- A financial or royalty accounting background.
- A successful track record in people management.
- Experience assessing staff training and development needs.
- In-house experience at a music publisher in a managerial capacity within administration.
- Experience of contributing to data migration implementation projects and contributing to system enhancements including UAT.
- An interest in the intersection of technology and music.
- Experience with SQL.
- Experience or knowledge of DSP licensing and an understanding of the digital music supply chain.
- Experience of working with Tableau, Power BI and Alteryx.
About us
As the home to Asylum, Atlantic, East West, Elektra, FFRR, Fueled by Ramen, Nonesuch, Parlophone, Rhino, Roadrunner, Sire, Warner Records, Warner Classics, and several other of the world’s premier recording labels, Warner Music Group champions emerging artists and global superstars alike. And our renowned publishing company, Warner Chappell Music, represents genre-spanning songwriters and producers through a catalogue of more than one million copyrights worldwide.
Redefining what it means to be a music company in the 21st century, our consumer brands include trend-setters like UPROXX, Songkick, HipHopDX, and EMP. We’re the home to WMX – the next generation services division that connects artists with fans and amplifies brands in creative, immersive, and engaging ways – and Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA) – the ground-breaking global distribution company for independent artists and labels.
Together, we are Warner Music Group: Music With Vision & Voice.
Love this job and want to apply?
Click the “Apply” link at the top of the page, or apply directly with your LinkedIn. Applying with LinkedIn will import all of the information you put in your profile, but will still allow you to upload a resume and cover letter.
Don’t be discouraged if you don’t hear from us right away. We’re taking our time to review all resumes, and to find the best people for WMG.
Thanks for your interest in working for WMG. We love it here, and think you will, too.
WMG is committed to inclusion and diversity in all aspects of our business. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and will evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, religion or belief, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or gender reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, disability, pregnancy, childbirth or any other characteristic protected by law.