Music Publishing & Sync: Where to Start w/ Miller Williams, Senior VP Creative, Kobalt Music Publishing

#HowWeListen Live: In Conversation Podcast

"The better the song, the more likely it is to get synced and the more people will listen to it."

This episode’s guest is Miller Williams, Senior VP Creative at Kobalt Music Publishing. Miller’s role at Kobalt covers A&R, songwriter services, and catalogue acquisitions. He also works with their international agents and sub-publishers to exploit their songs and help their writers with co-write opportunities. Signings include Becky Hill, Milow, Jef Martens, Houston Comma publishing, Carla Monroe, AJ Tracy, Martin Sjolie, and Alex Clare. Williams has also held similar A&R and/or creative positions at Sony ATV UK, BMG Records UK, PWL Records UK, and Terrace Music (Nashville). In this episode, Miller talks about going from zero to hero, getting synchs and how things work when you are writing and pitching songs to K-Pop and J-Pop artists. They also get into how things are working in Africa these days and of course how Miller made it into the music ecosystem to start with.

Kobalt is one of the most successful independent companies for music publishing, label services and rights management. In his role as Senior Vice President of Creative there, Miller works across A&R, collaborations and music marketing.

"Yeah! Usually what I find is that if you scratch beneath the surface, the artists who have become successful have done a ton of work behind the scenes that no one has known about. I don’t think there’s any shortcut to success. Lil Nas X did become famous quite quickly through TikTok, but he’s proven that he can write hit after hit which is another important thing - longevity. That’s a real skill to be able to keep going and reinvent yourself."

#HowWeListen Live: In Conversation

00:10 - Byta.com

02:06 - Kobalt

6:15 - Belmont College

6:20 - PWL

6:22 - Global Talent Publishing

8:45 - BIMM & ICMP

10:18 - Berklee Music

12:12 - Orbital

16:55 - MP3s and downloads

23:00 - NTFs

27:35 - Japan

30:27 - Katie Gregson

36:13 - Vaccines

38:40 - Justin Bieber finds Omah Lay

41:44 - Ultra Records

44:10 - Adapter

45:42 - Ive released “Love Dive”

48:34 - emPawa Africa

49:09 - Chioma Onuchukwu.

51:24 - WizKiz, BurnaBoy, Mr Eazi, Tems

52:37 - SAMRO

53:00 - Sheer Music

53:42 - SOCAN

54:33 - Sentric Music

55:48 - Artist Journey

58:24 - PRS (Performing Right Society),

MCPS (collects and distributes mechanical royalties to songwriters, composers and publishers)

1:01:43 - Corinne Bailey Rae, Like a Star, “Put Your Records On”

1:05:57 - Byta.com

Music by Fin Productions and Oliver Lyu

Episode Credits:

Artwork by Jen Pmphrey

Hosted by Marc Brown

Series coordinated by Jamie Ford

Produced and edited by Colin MacKenzie

Music by Fin Productions and Oliver Lyu