Senior Manager, Royalty Administration & Onboarding

Job Summary

At Create Music Group, acquiring a catalog is only the beginning. The next step is turning each acquisition into a fully operational royalty business — accurately configured, scalable, and built to serve artists, partners, and rightsholders for the long term.

The Senior Manager, Royalty Administration & Onboarding plays a critical role in making that happen. This leader oversees the royalty onboarding strategy for newly acquired catalogs, translating complex deal terms into clear, effective royalty structures and workflows across Create’s systems. From interpreting acquisition agreements to designing the future-state setup, this role ensures every catalog is positioned for accurate and efficient royalty administration from day one.

As a key partner to our M&A, Finance, Legal, and Royalties teams, the Senior Manager is involved early in the acquisition lifecycle—including during diligence—to identify royalty requirements, surface potential gaps, and help shape a seamless transition into Create’s platform. The role works closely with the Director of Royalties and leads a growing team responsible for bringing each onboarding strategy to life.

This is an opportunity to sit at the intersection of music rights, acquisitions, operations, and technology at a company that continues to expand its global catalog and platform. We’re looking for a leader who understands the details of royalty administration but can also see the bigger picture: how to build scalable processes, navigate complex deals, and create an exceptional foundation for every catalog that joins Create Music Group.

Responsibilities

• Own contract-to-system royalty interpretation company-wide: rates, splits, territories, escalators, cross-collateralization, recoupment, and defensible workarounds where a platform cannot implement a term literally.
• Own the Royalties Readiness Gate for incoming acquisitions. Issue the go/no-go recommendation on every acquisition before it enters statement processing, with peer review from the Senior Manager, Royalty Accounting & Operations.

• Own the handoff packet standard for incoming acquisitions.
• Every acquisition handoff states plainly what is final, what is assumed, and what remains open.
• No acquisition transfers to operations without one.

• Lead contractual royalty obligation analysis for acquisitions, including a written risk/reward recommendation on onboarding methodology — migrate the label into our systems, or leave it on its existing platform.
• Represent Royalties in M&A diligence from LOI. Own the royalty section of the diligence memo and the list of closing conditions Royalties depends on.
• Own the team's project portfolio: expense validation tooling, bulk and automated ingestion of expenses, sales, and contracts, the M&A onboarding checklist, and automated metadata, contract, and payor template generation derived from statement analysis.
• Own role-based access and configuration governance across all royalty systems. Define who may create clients, update splits, and alter contract terms — and enforce it.
• Establish and enforce upstream intake requirements from other departments for expense, advance, and account-creation requests, so approved requests specify the opportunity, amount, and recipient before work is initiated.
• Run prior-acquisition review: find and correct configuration and mapping errors from past integrations before they compound

Set, publish, and hold the KPIs for both integration and ongoing operations: time-to-royalty-ready per acquisition, post-close error rate, and Label Administration team throughput, quality, and escalation resolution at this role's level rather than the Director's.

Manage, mentor, and develop the Label Administration and Integration teams, including two people managers

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
• A demonstrated track record of catalog integration or onboarding — you have migrated an acquired catalog onto a platform, not just administered one already in place

Hands-on experience translating contract terms — rates, splits, territories, escalators, cross-collateralization, recoupment — into system configuration. Experience handling advanced multi-layer royalty recoupment models and cross collateralization 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
• Able to read an acquisition agreement, schedule, or exhibit and identify what it requires of a royalty system before configuration begins
• Judgment to design a defensible workaround when a platform cannot implement a contract term literally, and to document why
• Experience owning access and configuration governance: defining who may create clients, update splits, or alter contract terms, and holding that line across departments
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including writing a recommendation that a diligence or finance audience can act on
• Organized and accurate across concurrent acquisitions at different stages and day to day administration of onboarded catalogs and direct signings

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