Vice President, Global Digital Partnerships & Emerging Media

OVERVIEW: 

As Kobalt’s Global Digital Business team continues to evolve and grow, we are negotiating increasingly sophisticated deals, managing a heightened volume of transactions & partnerships, and adapting to new markets and products that are coming to market across the world.  Additionally, the commercial challenges and complexity that is required for confident and best-in-class execution of digital licensing deals with existing services and new segments requires a senior level role that is empowered to dive significant strategic thinking and close deals.  The VP, Global Digital Business lead negotiations with licensees and other partners and act as a senior strategic point of contact with Kobalt’s global digital partners. The role will play an integral part in supporting strategy formulation and gathering and synthesizing deal requirements to drive mutually workable outcomes in negotiations and partner development.  They will have significant responsibility to drive the future of our digital business into the future.

WHAT DOES AN VP, GLOBAL DIGITAL BUSINESS AT KOBALT DO?

• The VP will act as negotiator and strategic lead with a wide set of Kobalt’s digital partners, and in doing so will source requirements, design new deal parameters, and execute upon our digital strategy
• Collaborate with a diverse set of internal stakeholders to ensure the effective operationalization of the partnerships across the internal business while engaging, monitoring, tuning and steering our external business relationships.
• Negotiate multi-million dollar content licensing partnerships that are material revenue to Kobalt.  Including YouTube, Apple, Spotify, TikTok, Meta, Amazon, etc.
• SA key executive at Kobalt for all matters related to our digital business, including income, how rights flow globally and across different types of client deals, digital royalties, commercial structures, and overall platform trends and opportunities across the entire music business.
• Strategy Corporate Development:  Will collaborate closely with Kobalt Senior Management in developing various Corporate Strategy Projects, collaborating with Finance, Operations, Creative, Tech, Administration, Business Affairs, all on a global basis.
• Will have flexibility to create new deal structures independently (with appropriate oversight and approval process that are outlined).  
• Will work through new platform partnerships that are outside of “licensing” deals, including monetization optimization services, data analytics, creative & marketing, among others.
• Will work closely with various trade associations, including NMPA (National Music Publishers’ Association, various societies, and IFPI, among others.

WHAT SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

• 10+ years of experience in commercial licensing negotiations at a music publisher or record label, including first-hand experience with licensing mechanical, performance, sync, and lyric rights globally. Negotiation skills must be excellent.
• First in class executive level social and presentation skills.  This role will interact closely with all of Kobalt Senior Management, including CEO, as well as various industry C-Suite staff.
• Highly adept at prioritizing business critical items in a high-stakes environment.
• Highly fluent in industry operational matters, including DDEX, Work Registrations custom-and-practice.
• Deep analytical skills, with particular focus on forecasting and modeling out market growth trends and overall economic value of our key licensing deals.
• Ability to work across a multifunctional team successfully. Experience navigating complex problems while partnering with all levels of the organization.