Driving Music Industry Success

For 25 years, I've lived where the worlds of recorded music and publishing overlap. That has given me a unique view and understanding of the business side of a song that most people never see. Registrations, splits, credits, identifiers - get those right and the money finds the people that made the music. Get them wrong and underlying problems may persist for years. I founded Equalizer Consulting to close that gap because I firmly believe that the knowledge to have a solid data and rights foundation shouldn’t be reserved for those with major-label resources behind them.

My background runs across label operations, publishing administration, corporate data strategy, and music tech product development, including oversight of a $17 million portfolio of music tech and data projects. That range of experience is what I lean on most. A decision made in one corner of the ecosystem ripples through the rest. Having sat in many of the seats, I can usually tell you where a problem started, not just where it showed up.

For companies, it’s not just about cleaning bad data. It’s about the layer underneath: standards, workflows, data literacy, and training that prevent things from going wrong. Most metadata problems aren’t software issues, they’re process problems, and the fix sits with those that handle metadata every day but are rarely shown how their piece connects to the bigger picture. I’ve worked with teams at every level, from C-Suite to entry level, and everyone in that chain affects what a song is ultimately worth.

For artists and songwriters, it’s more personal. We go through your catalog, get your registrations and data in order, and make sure your ownership is recorded where it needs to be. Understanding where your catalog earns, and being ready when opportunities come, tends to change how you make decisions about your music career.

Teaching has become a larger part of this than I expected. I’m an adjunct professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in Los Angeles, where I teach the masters capstone course. I also run the Equalizer internship program, which puts students on real catalog and rights work before they graduate into it. Working with students who are about to enter this industry is a steady reminder that the next group of music professionals will inherit whatever data practices we leave behind. I speak regularly at conferences and on podcasts, some of which are about music data and rights, others about entrepreneurship and what it takes to build an advisory business. I also co-founded Pitch Perfect, a community for women entrepreneurs in music, which came from the same philosophy as everything else here: the people figuring this out alone shouldn’t have to.

Whether you’re a label trying to scale without the chaos, a tech company building a rights system, or an artist that feels overwhelmed with where to start on the boring backend of their catalog, the first step is the same - let’s take an honest look at what you have.