Kobalt Music Group
Kobalt Music Group, Ltd. is an independent rights management and music publishing company. Founded in 2000 by CEO Willard Ahdritz,[3] Kobalt acts primarily as an administrative publishing company, not owning any copyrights. Also offering label services and neighboring rights,[3] the company has developed an online portal to provide royalty income and activity to artists and allow them to manage their rights and royalties directly.[4]
For other uses, see Kobalt.Company type
2000, in New York City, New York, U.S.
Willard Ahdritz
Worldwide
- Publishing
- Neighbouring rights
- Label services
- Kobalt Label Services (KLS)
- Kobalt Music Publishing (KMP)
In 2015 it was reported that Kobalt was "the top independent music publisher in the UK and the second overall (to Sony/ATV) in the US," with around 600,000 songs and 8,000 artists in its catalogue[5] Examples of artists served by Kobalt include Paul McCartney, Foo Fighters, John Denver, The Weeknd and Marshmello.[6]
Kobalt owned 17.3% of the top 100 radio songs in the US in of 2015, ranking it third after Universal.[7] With headquarters in New York, Kobalt also has offices in London, Berlin, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Stockholm and Sydney.[8] Kobalt paid $29.8 million for the acquisition of Fintage House's Music Companies.[9]
Technology[edit]
Kobalt has developed a number of technologies to increase its own efficiency at tracking and collecting royalties.[27][28] In 2005 the company debuted its Kobalt Portal,[10] an online portal for artists to track and manage their own portfolios.[4] In 2014, Kobalt introduced ProKlaim, a YouTube integration that by 2014 had significantly increased artist revenue on the platform. ProKlaim serves as an "advanced detection platform" by integrating with YouTube's own music detection technology.[29] As of 2015, Kobalt had started describing their backend technology as "KORE."[30][31] KORE manages rights, and tracks, collects and pay royalties across disparate markets, with the collected data accessible through the Kobalt Portal.[31]
The following is an incomplete list of awards won by Kobalt Music Group: