Kobalt Music

Through technology, Kobalt empowers artists and songwriters with transparency, flexibility, ownership, and control. The future of music made simple.

Founded 2000
501-1000 employees
  • TV, Music, Film, & Theater
  • Legal Services
  • News, Media, Advertising, & Publishing
  • Headquarters address
    The River Building, 1 Cousin Lane, EC4R 3TE
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    Who are we

    Kobalt Music is the only music technology company with a global music rights services platform built for artists, songwriters, publishers and labels as an alternative to the traditional music business model.

    Kobalt’s mission from day one has been to take the music industry into the digital age and to deliver transparency to rights owners and creators.

    It’s a complex industry

    Imagine this. One song, played in 87 countries, 124 TV ads, 3,000+ record stores, 850K radio spins, 1M local pub plays, 3M iTunes downloads, 536M Spotify streams, 1.8B Vevo plays, 2B YouTube views.

    That’s about 4 billion transactions. Multiply that by three + rights holders and you’ve got 12B transactions.

    That’s a lot of volume, at a low value tied to a super complex rights structure. Kobalt was designed for this volume and complexity.

    Click the video below to find out more.

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    Cue Willard

    Our CEO Willard Ahdritz founded Kobalt in 2000.

    He recognized the opportunity and the digital evolution ahead. Willard built Kobalt with the goal of making the music industry fair and transparent, bringing the industry to the digital age and making sure creators still got paid.

    Kobalt Today

    The music industry is going through exponential growth, thanks to digital streaming providers such as Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, and others. Kobalt is at the heart of this.

    We’ve grown our Publishing business faster than any of the majors at 3x’s the market and we’ve held the #2 spot in US market share by airplay for two consecutive quarters. We’re now disrupting the Recordings market with AWAL. We’re building a scalable, efficient platform to manage the growing middle-class ecosystem of recording artists like Lauv, Madison Beer, Lil Simz, and Freya Ridings.

    We interface directly with over 20 streaming providers and represent an ever growing roster featuring some of the world's most recognized talent, breakthrough artists and songwriters, and up-and-coming stars (full roster here) enabling them to reach a rapidly growing audience through various channels.

    To do this, we need to constantly innovate in a highly complex and unchartered environment. We are firm believers that Technology enables our business to experience tremendous growth, and by remaining at the forefront of the Technology evolution, we will continuously look to embrace new ways to keep looking to improve, and to remain a disruptor.

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    Our Technology

    Hear from our CTO, Rian Liebenberg to why he decided to join Kobalt Music.
    Rian Liebenberg: Why I joined Kobalt

    Our platform is the foundation of Kobalt. We’re the only company that has built the technology infrastructure to track the trillions of micro transactions and fix all the royalty payment inefficiencies in the music industry. Our platform allows artists to manage all their rights in a transparent way.

    We register their works globally with more Digital Service Providers than anyone else, with more accurate data than anyone else, we then track these trillions of transactions, collect the money, pay them and provide them with transparent data. This, in turn, enables us to fund and grow the next generation of artists and songwriters, using technology and data in novel ways to do this on a global, industrial scale. We're simplifying global distribution at scale, whilst bringing transparency and fairness back to the creators.

    The music industry is not built on technology, but technology can and will change the future of music.

    Tomorrow’s Tech Stack: Yours to influence.

    Today’s Tech Stack: Java, PHP, Scala, AWS, Docker, JavaScript, React, Spark, Oracle, SQL.

    Why we need you

    We’re building a world-class product & engineering organisation to continue to revolutionise the music industry. We are pioneering change and we are only just getting started…

    We’re hiring for multiple skills that bring a blend of experience and diversity to support this initiative. As a technologist you can play a key role in this disruption.

    We deal with huge amounts of data on a daily basis and need to leverage scalable technologies, as well as efficient and innovative ways of processing and utilising to drive value for supply chain & serve artists better.

    We represent approximately 20% of the total headcount, which is unrivalled amongst any other music business. We are in hyper growth mode and expected to double in size over the coming years.

    Our Values

    Put creators first
    Be transparent
    Move fast & keep it simple
    Champion diversity
    Stay humble
    Empower growth and development
    Think like an entrepreneur

    Our Team

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    Tech stack

    Java, Microservices, Scala, Python, JavaScript, React, Redux, Node, Docker, Ansible, EC2, Terraform, AWS, SQL, Spark, PHP

    Benefits

    Compensation and retirement

    Pension plan

    Health and wellness

    Insurance (Health)
    Insurance (Dental)
    Insurance (Vision)
    Insurance (Life)
    Insurance (Disability)
    Child or elder care stipend
    Fitness reimbursement

    Vacation and time off

    Paid time off
    Paid holidays
    Flexible working hours
    Work from home flexibility
    Maternity benefits
    Paternity benefits
    Adoption assistance

    Personal development

    Management training
    Job training
    Conferences reimbursement

    Values and quality of life

    Diversity program
    Accessible via public transportation
    Employee groups and committees
    Catered meals
    Company activities
    Kobalt Music - Every Friday we supply drinks and snacks so that we can unwind and relax after the week.
    Kobalt Music - Company Photo
    Kobalt Music - Company Photo
    Kobalt Music - Company Photo
    Kobalt Music - Company Photo
    Kobalt Music - Company Photo