Senior Manager, Royalty Administration & Onboarding

Overview

This role helps turn newly acquired music catalogs into accurate, scalable royalty operations. The Senior Manager, Royalty Administration & Onboarding oversees royalty onboarding strategy for incoming catalogs, translating complex deal terms into clear royalty structures and workflows across the organization’s systems.

Working closely with M&A, Finance, Legal, and Royalties teams, this position contributes early in the acquisition lifecycle—including diligence—to identify royalty requirements, surface potential gaps, and support a smooth transition into the organization’s platform.

Responsibilities

• Own contract-to-system royalty interpretation company-wide, including:
  • rates, splits, territories, escalators
  • cross-collateralization, recoupment
  • defensible workarounds when a platform cannot implement a term literally
• Own the Royalties Readiness Gate for incoming acquisitions, providing go/no-go recommendations before statement processing (with peer review from the Senior Manager, Royalty Accounting & Operations)
• Own the handoff packet standard for incoming acquisitions, ensuring acquisitions do not transfer to operations without:
  • what is final
  • what is assumed
  • what remains open
• Lead contractual royalty obligation analysis for acquisitions, including written risk/reward recommendations on onboarding methodology (migrate the label into the organization’s systems, or leave it on its existing platform)
• Represent Royalties in M&A diligence from LOI by owning the royalty section of the diligence memo and the list of closing conditions Royalties depends on
• Own the team’s project portfolio, including:
  • expense validation tooling
  • bulk and automated ingestion of expenses, sales, and contracts
  • the M&A onboarding checklist
  • automated metadata, contract, and payor template generation derived from statement analysis
• Own role-based access and configuration governance across all royalty systems, including defining and enforcing who may create clients, update splits, or alter contract terms
• Establish and enforce upstream intake requirements for expense, advance, and account-creation requests so approved requests specify the opportunity, amount, and recipient before work begins
• Run prior-acquisition review to find and correct configuration and mapping errors from past integrations before they compound
• Set, publish, and manage KPIs for both integration and ongoing operations, including:
  • time-to-royalty-ready per acquisition
  • post-close error rate
  • Label Administration team throughput, quality, and escalation resolution at this role’s level (rather than the Director’s)
• Manage and mentor the Label Administration and Integration teams, including two people managers
• Other related duties as assigned

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in music business, accounting, finance, business administration, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience
  • In lieu of a degree, 5+ years of applicable royalty administration and royalty operations experience in the music industry will be considered
• 4+ years of relevant royalty administration or royalty operations experience
• 2+ years of people management experience, ideally including managing other managers, or clearly ready to step into that
• Demonstrated track record of catalog integration or onboarding (migrating an acquired catalog onto a platform, not only administering one already in place)
• Hands-on experience translating contract terms (rates, splits, territories, escalators, cross-collateralization, recoupment) into system configuration
  • Experience with advanced multi-layer royalty recoupment models and cross-collateralization is highly desirable
• Experience configuring an enterprise royalty or rights-management platform (Label Engine, Curve, Vistex Music Maestro and/or Record Maestro, Counterpoint, or SR1) at a configuration level, not just day-to-day operation
• Ability to read an acquisition agreement, schedule, or exhibit and identify what it requires of a royalty system before configuration begins
• Judgment to design defensible workarounds when a platform cannot implement a contract term literally, including documenting why
• Experience owning access and configuration governance (defining who may create clients, update splits, or alter contract terms) and enforcing it across departments
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including writing recommendations a diligence or finance audience can act on
• Strong organization and accuracy while handling concurrent acquisitions at different stages and day-to-day administration of onboarded catalogs and direct signings

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with advanced royalty recoupment models and cross-collateralization
• Experience representing a function in M&A diligence
• Working knowledge of SQL against a cloud data warehouse (able to run and adapt a query to validate a configuration or a migration)
• Experience with template or tooling automation, such as metadata, contract, or payor template generation, or bulk ingestion of expenses, sales, and contracts
• Familiarity with DDEX or DSR reporting standards
• Experience with BI or reporting tools such as Sigma, Looker, Tableau, or Power BI
• Background at a major label, large independent, or distributor

Compensation & Benefits

• $90,000 - $120,000 USD per year
• Final compensation within this range will be determined based on the candidate’s experience, skills, and overall fit for the role.

Location

Hollywood, CA

Fair Chance Policy

In accordance with the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, the organization will consider employment for qualified applicants with criminal histories. Candidates are evaluated based on qualifications and the nature of the offense in relation to the job for which they are applying.