Senior VP Creative at Kobalt Music Publishing, Miller Williams is our guest on this episode. Miller has been in the music business for a long time and made his way from publishing to record labels and then back to publishing. Miller traces his journey through the music ecosystem and talks about where to start when it comes to getting a synch license for your songs. Plus a little insight into writing for K-Pop & J-Pop.
"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
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