Warner Chappell Music – UK Copyright Manager – Music Business Worldwide

UK Copyright Manager

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, sexual orientation, race, religion, ethnicity, disability, veteran status, and any other 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.

Job Title: UK Copyright Manager

A little bit about our team:

UK Copyright is an integral part of our UK Administration division at Warner Chappell UK, alongside UK Royalty and Income Tracking. The team is the custodian of our copyrights, responsible for the administration of all locally signed agreements and associated works, as well as maintaining the integrity of our extensive back-catalogue. Copyright performs a central and pivotal role in the end-to-end music value chain at Warner Chappell.

The Copyright Manager has a direct impact on our songwriters through efficient management of a team of 4, looking after contracts, registrations and all related processes. The Copyright Manager liaises with all areas of our business, working closely with our Finance, Legal, Royalty, Global Copyright, Global Analytics and Creative/Sync teams and regularly has the opportunity to work internationally with WCM affiliates, licensees and collection societies.

Your role

As the Copyright Manager, you will be forward-thinking, self-motivated and driven to deliver against a high-reaching set of revenue and activity KPIs. You will have the opportunity to continue crafting the role as our industry changes and our business evolves, advance how we run our UK Copyright and contractual administration activities, and collaborate with administration departments globally to improve awareness on pivotal administration processes.

You will be part of a future-facing administration team, building relationships across our writer client community, international affiliates and local performing and mechanical collection societies.

You will be responsible for preparing monthly and weekly reports, and using these to drive decision making to ensure maximum efficiency and ultimately to maximise royalty collections for our clients. You will be a confident people manager and team leader, able to effectively prioritise a busy workload and set a clear direction for your team.

Here you’ll get to:

• Lead and develop the UK Copyright team, shaping the future of the department
• Work to deliver process improvements and implement new ways of working
• Prioritise and plan your team’s workload to ensure deadlines are met
• Set critical metrics to measure team, society and third-party performance, creating regular performance reports for the Head of UK Administration as required
• Be responsible for the training and development of your team to build a multi skilled, flexible workforce able to adapt quickly to change
• Stay in sync with and complete internal audit requirements, managing checklists, review and sign off
• Lead the creation and maintenance of training materials and modules for new Copyright staff.
• Input into the development of the copyright sections of our in-house administration system, Tango
• Troubleshoot copyright enquiries for the UK Copyright team assisting our legal, finance and creative teams as required.
• Provide a high-level of service to our UK clients by responding to and coordinating client queries in a courteous and timely manner, investigating and resolving queries as required.
• Provide the business with regular status updates of UK Deals and associated Work registrations.
• Monitor accurate and timely territory-wide catalogue registrations for all new UK Deal signings and provide regular updates to the Head of UK Administration
• Liaise with counterparts across all affiliate offices and sub-publishers to ensure registrations and income flows are in line with expectations & resolve any interruptions or discrepancies.
• Ensure affiliate agreement & work registration queries are resolved
• Regularly communicate with PRS/MCPS, ICE and IMRO, as well as WCM’s PEDL processing partners
• Support the Head of Administration with strategic planning, goal setting and project management
• Collaborate with the global administration teams to develop standard process guides
• Work closely with the UK Royalty and Tracking teams to resolve and proactively prevent against issues arising with the collection of income
• Represent Warner Chappell at external meetings and participate in industry working groups

About you:

• An experienced manager within Music Administration or Operations, with a track record of delivering against activity and revenue targets
• An experienced people manager, comfortable with adapting your management style as needed when working with different groups of people
• A passion for team leadership and management skills
• First class communication skills, able to communicate complex ideas in a manner that is clear, concise and easy to understand
• Proactive, able to think ahead and anticipate any potential issues before they occur
• Know how and when to deliver feedback on the performance of people, teams and operations, to elicit the very best performance at all times
• An expert in copyright and agreement registrations, counterclaims and all related processes
• An awareness of CAF and CWR file formats
• Have advanced Excel skills including V lookup and pivot tables
• Experienced in reading and understanding music publishing contracts. You can interpret commercial terms with ease and confidently translate them into copyright and royalty systems
• You collaborate and consult with peers to strengthen business practices and improve efficiencies across departments
• You enjoy multi tasking and know how to employ effective time management, prioritisation and planning techniques to complete projects to deadlines
• You work well under pressure, remaining calm and productive when dealing with urgent deadlines
• In-depth knowledge of PRO/CMO collective rights administration policies and operational activities.
• Flexible, and comfortable working across time zones when required outside of regular working hours
• Skills to analyse, extract & manipulate data from high volume datafiles.
• Experience in setting up internal training documents and analysis reports tailored to the needs of the business.
• A forensic and meticulous approach to recording, analysing, manipulating, and maintaining data with a track record in delivering accurate and timely results

We’d love it if you also had:

• Experience with BI visualisation tools such as Power BI and Tableau
• Experience with Power Query and Project Management tools such as Monday.com
• The ability to demonstrate your personal drive and ambition
• The ability to join dots, think laterally and understand both downstream and upstream impact of events
• A thorough understanding of international collection society structures and their licensing/distribution processes
• A passion for music!
• A background in collection society or music rights management administration at a music publisher, record label or DSP

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 also 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.

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, religious creed, color, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, ancestry, marital status, medical condition as defined by state law (genetic characteristics or cancer), physical or mental disability, military service or veteran status, pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions, genetic information or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local law.