Senior Manager, Royalty Accounting & Operations

About the role

Established in 2015, Create Music Group is a leading music and entertainment company operating as a record label, distribution company, and entertainment network that generates over 15 billion music streams each month on DSPs. Named #2 on the Inc 5000 Fastest Growth Companies in America in 2020, the company leverages its owned IP with its media and technology platform, works with superstar artists, major and independent record labels, and global media brands, and operates Label Engine and Flighthouse. Based in Hollywood, CA with 400 employees worldwide.

The Senior Manager, Royalty Accounting & Operations owns the accuracy and throughput of royalty processing as the catalog grows by acquisition. You will be the technical authority on how revenue moves from a payor statement into Label Engine and out to a client statement, the escalation point for reconciliation issues, and the driver of automated ingestion to scale the function without adding headcount.

Responsibilities

• Own reconciliation across all revenue sources - statement vs. summary vs. cash receipt. Set the standard the team reconciles to, and resolve the variances that do not tie.
• Manage the Royalties Manager and the Royalties Administration Manager. Set the technical standard the teams work to, and serve as first-line technical authority on calculation, allocation, withholding, and recoupment questions those managers cannot resolve. Escalations are acknowledged within one business day; questions that set new precedent, cross a defined dollar threshold, or span multiple payors go to the Director within the same 48‑hour window.
• Own the tracking and ingestion of incoming Letters of Direction (LODs) end to end: master tracker, ingestion format per payor, cash reconciliation, and withholding correctness.
• Own statement ingestion automation and workflow optimization. Expand automated ingestion to the highest‑volume and most convoluted sources, and retire manual handling.
• Set, publish, and hold the operational KPIs for ingestion throughput and backlog burn‑down. Report progress monthly to the Director, and co‑present quarterly progress to the SVP alongside the Director.
• Partner with Data Engineering and Analytics to move statement ingestion, matching, and reporting off spreadsheets. Act as the royalty domain owner for the statement and calculation modules of the company's next‑generation platform: define requirements, write acceptance criteria, and work with product and engineering through delivery. Final roadmap prioritization is a joint call with Product and Engineering leadership.
• Collaborate with Finance on deal‑level performance reporting. Supply the royalty data and process interpretation that ties operational reality to deal economics.
• Perform statement and payor analysis on incoming acquisitions during diligence, not after close. Identify errors and revenue‑integration risks in transaction documentation before they become configuration problems.
• Build the Royalty Readiness Assessment for every acquisition and issue a formal recommendation to accept or refuse the post‑close handoff packet. The Director holds the countersignature and final refusal authority, acting on the recommendation within 48 hours.
• Manage, mentor, and develop the team - royalty depth on the administration side, analytical range on the statements side - and document knowledge that currently lives in individual heads.
• Other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, business, music business, or information systems, or an equivalent combination of education and experience; in lieu of a degree, 5+ years of demonstrated experience in the music business will be considered.
• 4+ years in music royalty operations, royalty accounting, or income tracking at a label, publisher, distributor, or royalty administrator, including owning a full statement cycle end to end.
• 2+ years of people management experience, ideally including managing other managers, or clearly ready to step into that role.
• Direct, hands‑on experience processing royalty statements at volume. This is not a corporate accounting, financial reporting, or FP&A role.
• Deep working knowledge of inbound royalty statement processing: locating, ingesting, templating, matching, and validating statements from DSPs, distribut