Royalties Director

Role Description

Company Description

X& Business Management (X&BM) is a business-management firm based in Los Angeles. Business management is the profession of running the entire financial life of a client: entertainers, athletes, founders, and cultural figures whose income arrives from many sources, flows through many entities, and touches many advisors. X&BM handles all of it: accounting, bill pay, cash management, payroll, royalty administration, insurance, and tax.

The client gets one team, one set of numbers, and one trusted advisor who knows everything about their money and answers the phone when it matters. X&BM is built to deliver accuracy, speed, and discretion without compromise.

X&BM is the business-management arm of X&, a financial holding company dedicated to maximizing human potential by operating, investing in, and building businesses at the intersection of capital, influence, and technology. Through X&VC, X& backs exceptional founders and funds with institutional venture capital, global networks, brand support, and go-to-market expertise. X& draws on "Influential Capital," the combination of capital, distribution, access, and trust, to create advantages beyond traditional financing.

The company is headquartered in Los Angeles and Tokyo and works alongside partner funds including Aoki Labs, BYL Ventures, Hart Beat Ventures, and Markham Valley Ventures. For X&BM's clients, that means a business manager who sits inside a house with capital, deal flow, and relationships that a standalone firm cannot offer.

The Royalties Director leads royalty administration at X&BM: every stream of royalty, licensing, and participation income owed to the firm's clients, tracked, collected, audited, and reported. This is a full-time, on-site role in Los Angeles, reporting to the head of X&BM and working directly with the Business Managers and the Tax Director.

For an artist, writer, athlete, or producer, royalties are the income that is easiest to lose. The Royalties Director makes sure none of it is. That means:

• Owning every royalty stream. Building and maintaining the complete map of each client's entitlements: recording, publishing, performance, sync, neighboring rights, merchandise, name-and-likeness, endorsement, book, film and television participations, and licensing income of every kind.
• Collection. Registering works and rights with every collecting society, distributor, label, publisher, and licensee that owes the client money, and chasing every payment that is late, short, or missing.
• Royalty audits. Reviewing statements line by line against contracts, identifying underpayments, and leading formal royalty audits and recovery claims with outside auditors and counsel.
• Contract intelligence. Reading every deal that generates royalty income, extracting the economic terms, and building them into the client's tracking so expected income can be compared to received income.
• Catalog transactions. Supporting Business Managers and counsel on catalog sales, financing against royalty streams, and valuations, and producing the income histories those transactions depend on.
• Reporting. Delivering clear royalty income reports to each client and their Business Manager, and feeding the numbers into the client's cash forecast and tax planning.
• Serving the group. Royalty administration serves the clients of X&BM and every business-management company in the X& group. The Royalties Director builds the function to scale beyond one firm.
• Leading the team. Hiring, developing, and reviewing the Royalties Analysts.

• Eight or more years in royalty administration, music or entertainment finance, or rights management, including several years leading a royalty function or team.
• Deep command of how royalty income is generated, reported, and paid across recording, publishing, performance, sync, merchandise, and licensing, and hands-on experience with the collecting societies, distributors, and labels involved.
• A track record of royalty audits and underpayment recoveries, with specific results.
• Strong contract-reading skills: the ability to extract economic terms from recording, publishing, endorsement, and participation agreements.
• Strong accounting and analytical skills. A bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, music business, or a related field. CPA is a plus.
• Experience with royalty-administration systems.
• Proven leadership: managing a team, influencing labels and publishers on the client's behalf, and building processes that…