We’re looking for a Business Affairs Manager to strengthen our management and label team. You will be responsible for all legalities of our operation, including the creation of contracts (including master, publishing, license, sync), negotiations with third parties, legal optimization, trademarks, insurances and risk mitigation for both Heroic and bitbird. These are two separate companies who share key personnel and resources. You'll work closely with the artist managers and operational staff at Heroic, the label staff at bitbird and will report to our CEO (whom is the same person for Heroic & bitbird), COO (Heroic) and Label Manager (bitbird). This can be a remote position, as well as in our office in The Hague.
Heroic is an independent music management agency with headquarters in The Netherlands and team members distributed worldwide. We provide artist management, record label and publishing services for our clients. Our mission is to empower creators to positively influence culture.
bitbird is an independent record label spearheaded by San Holo with headquarters in The Netherlands and team members worldwide. We provide record label, publishing and apparel services to our artists and writers. We aspire to be the fairest record company in the business and our motto is “create, forever”.
Responsibilities:
- Legal strategy: Working closely with our CEO to optimize the legal architecture of our businesses, collaboration with clients and affiliated companies. Create and maintain contracts, agreements and templates.
- Licensing strategy: Working closely with CEO to devise the optimal licensing strategy for our businesses and management clients with partners such as distributors, DSPs (Spotify, Apple), publishers and sync agencies.
- Legal operations: Creation, review, negotiation, execution and auditing of all contracts. These include master license agreements, publishing (title) agreements, collaboration agreements between artists, license deals to distributors, sync partners, advertising agencies, management agreements and more. Closely collaborating with legal representatives of our key partners as well as our external legal counsel. Training frontline staff to handle routine agreements.
- Monitoring of agreements: Documentation of all contracts, their terms and durations in our legal software. Monitoring of durations and servicing of renewal or termination notices when due.
- Guarding of rights: Monitoring the rightful use of our rights, serving cease and desist notices, issuing take-downs and applying further legal action if so required.
Requirements
- Bachelor of Law, or higher: We are looking for someone who understands law, however do not require you to be a practicing lawyer necessarily. Industry experience and familiarity with music contracts is key.
- Familiar with music intellectual property law: Understanding of copyrights, master rights, neighbouring rights, public performance, mechanical and performance rights, publishing, synchronization rights.
- Familiar with company law: Understanding of international company structures, partnership agreements, licensing agreements, workings of value added tax and obligations of private and limited companies.
- Experience in the music industry: This job can be taught, however experience in the industry is a large perk - particularly when it entails having practiced law in the industry.
- Negotiation and mediation skills: You need to be able to negotiate on our behalf to attain the best possible deals for our company. Meanwhile you should have the skill to mediate and de-escalate heated discussions to ensure positive results for all parties involved.
- Willing to try, not afraid to fail: You need a willingness to learn and master unfamiliar skills. We operate in a unique, non-traditional way and require you to adapt to our operations. We are after learning and embrace that failure is a part of that process.
- Seeking constant self-improvement: We strive to be an organization where the best ideas succeed. We communicate and operate transparently. We strive for continuous evolution and do not shy from giving honest feedback for the greater good of the organization. You must be open to receiving and giving feedback for the greater good of the company.
- Work hard, play hard mentality: Our primary responsibility is taking care of our artists. The music industry is chaotic and quickly changing, often requiring spurts of work at inconvenient moments. You must be willing to get the job done.
- Ability to work 40 hours/week: Our office hours are 10:00 - 18:00 CET, however as many of our team members are international, you may have to work at odd hours regularly.
- Ability to come into our office in The Hague is a bonus.
We are open to applications from lawyers, holders of master and bachelor degrees in Laws, Literature, Business or people who otherwise have gained experience with music law. We believe this is a job that can be taught, assuming the candidate has a sufficient foundation and willingness to learn and work.
Do you have what it takes?
Submit your resume and a motivational letter explaining your history with law, the music industry and why you think you're a good fit for this role and our team. You’ll hear from us if we’re interested in your application.