www.musicweek.com THE BIG INTERVIEW WILLARD AHDRITZ


21.11.14 Music Week 11


SAY, YOU WANNA REVOLUTION?


Kobalt CEO Willard Ahdritz believes the music industry is killing itself. He has a vision for the future, one he says will benefit every artist, writer and rights-holder in existence. But it will cause music biz heavyweights short-term pain - something he says they’re desperate to avoid


RIGHTS n BY TIM INGHAM


W


illard Ahdritz is staring intently into my eyes. His wrist perches unnervingly close to my forearm, his fingers gently


patting my elbow. He nods with reassuring deference. “I love your music,” he says with a soft, sincere burr. “That’s all that matters, Tim. Your music is sensational.” Ahdritz’s playful advances are uncomfortably conspicuous within the prim breakfast hall of west London’s Millennium Mayfair Hotel. This is evidence of two things: first, that the Swedish-born exec cares little for stuffy business-like etiquette when making points he feels essential; and second, how sincerely angry he feels about the slight-of-hand deal- making that’s screwed creators within the record and publishing industries over the past century. Ahdritz’s charm offensive, you realise, is a


caricature; he is lampooning self-serving fat cats, an executive strain he worries is still dominant in music - and that’s gradually choking this industry to death. “Your songs are magic,” he continues, building


up to his carefully considered kiss-off: “What does money, royalties have to do with this? Nothing. Let me take care of all that boring stuff.”


Kobalt’s very business model is predicated on


being the antithesis to Ahdritz’s crooked stooge - helping artists and songwriters get open access to every detail of “the boring stuff” and understanding why they’ve been paid what, when. The company, founded in 2000, believes that commercial power will increasingly migrate into the hands of artists and songwriters in the next few years - and that they will use it to seek out “transparency, flexibility and ownership” from their industry partners. Kobalt offers notoriously generous revenue


splits to its clients, but rarely pays out big advances. Instead its gives creators the chance to own their copyrights, while picking from a menu of services that includes online global copyright administration, sync, A&R, digital collections, label services and neighbouring rights management. Ahdritz professes that the reporting and


collection mechanisms at major publishers and labels are under-performing and opaque, and that Kobalt’s setup is simply more efficient. He claims that writers at big publishers sometimes receive royalties 24 months after they should - and that they are forced to pay 50% or more of their gross royalties to ‘intermediaries’ like collection societies. This, says Ahdritz, is unfair on the most


important parties in the music business. Well, what he actually says - in vernacular refreshingly


ABOVE


“The pipes are broken”: Willard Ahdritz suspects that his


rivals’ royalty collection and reporting systems are not as fast or responsive as Kobalt’s


unpolluted by copyright double-speak - is that he’s “sick and tired of the bullshit”. He rubs his temples. “If people were focused


on building a great industry, we would have a great industry,” he snaps. “We do not. The current back- end structures are not prepared for the new digital business. The pipes are broken.” Frustrations with his rivals aside, Ahdritz has


a spring in his step: new research from Kobalt claims that anonymous writers who have migrated to the company from major publishers now receive 30% higher quarterly revenues on average. The reason for this uplift, says Ahdritz, is almost all down to superior technology. Better pipes. Kobalt’s online platform directly retrieves royalty


monies from the likes of Spotify, iTunes, YouTube and the collection societies. Ahdritz says this greatly reduces the transactional costs swallowed by his competitors – costs which ultimately end up being paid for by creators. He explains: “One big global hit today has 700,000 different revenue streams. One of them could be Vevo, and Vevo itself could have 300 million streams of [a track]. “The tree of data for that one song is already


enormous. Then you have split copyrights, 200 DSPs, more than 50 territories, 12 different languages. You need one sophisticated system for all rights on a global level.”


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