SoundExchange has appointed Michele Page as general counsel and Paul Shaver as Senior Vice President, Business Development. Their separate responsibilities give independent labels a practical staffing decision: assign ownership of finding commercial opportunities separately from ownership of deciding what the business can legally promise.
Two appointments, two different jobs
Page will oversee SoundExchange’s legal operations and advise its executive team. Shaver will oversee growth opportunities, partnerships and emerging technology strategy. Those mandates divide the work between developing a commercial proposition and advising the people who must approve it.
The distinction matters when an independent decides what its next hire should accomplish. A business development brief should specify the opportunities that person must identify, the relationships they should develop and the proposals they should bring forward. A legal brief should specify the decisions requiring advice and the questions that must be resolved before the company makes a commitment.
An independent need not reproduce those executive titles. It should reproduce the clarity. Giving one employee responsibility for partnerships does not, by itself, answer who can approve the rights involved, accept contractual obligations or commit the catalogue. Write those responsibilities into the role before asking the employee to deliver growth.
The mechanism is straightforward: a commercial proposal sets out what a prospective partner wants and what it offers in return. Legal review tests whether the company can make those commitments. Executive approval decides whether the exchange serves the business. Treat these as distinct tasks, even when a small team assigns more than one to the same person.
Make the commercial handover concrete
SoundExchange’s business development remit explicitly combines partnerships with emerging technology strategy. That combination puts a useful question into an independent’s hiring brief: should the employee merely introduce potential partners, or also turn unfamiliar propositions into decisions the company can evaluate?
Choose the second if the role will handle catalogue opportunities. Ask the employee to produce a short proposal that identifies what the partner wants to use, what the label would receive and what work the label would undertake. The job should move an opportunity beyond a conversation and into a form that another person can approve.
Build the handover around a repeatable set of questions:
- Catalogue scope: Which recordings or other assets does the proposal involve?
- Authority: Who should verify that the company can grant the requested permission?
- Commercial terms: What payment or other consideration does the proposal offer, and what conditions attach to it?
- Delivery: Who would provide the assets and fulfil the company’s commitments?
- Approval: Who makes the final decision, and what must they see first?
This checklist gives business development a deliverable and legal review a defined starting point. It also gives an independent a way to assess the role’s work: count proposals that reach an informed decision, rather than relying on the number of introductions made.
Match experience to the function being built
A different appointment shows why the business function should come before the job title. Suno appointed former Ticketmaster executive Michael Chua to oversee its live music business, including Songkick and initiatives supporting emerging artists. The appointment places a defined business area under an executive whose previous employer connects directly to that area.
The staffing implication for an independent is to name the capability it needs before choosing a candidate. If the business wants someone to build partnerships, ask candidates to explain how they would qualify an opportunity and get it approved. If it needs someone to run an operation, ask how they would assign work, resolve dependencies and establish responsibility for delivery.
Those are different interview questions because they test different jobs. A broad instruction to ‘grow the business’ leaves the candidate to interpret whether success means opening relationships, negotiating proposals or operating a new service. Specify which of those outcomes the company actually needs.
Chua’s remit includes both Songkick and emerging-artist initiatives. For a smaller company, a similarly combined brief should state which responsibilities take priority. Before adding another activity to an employee’s role, decide what existing work can receive less attention and who accepts that trade-off.
Keep executive approval visible
Page’s mandate includes advising SoundExchange’s executive team. That places legal advice in the decision process while retaining a separate executive audience for it. An independent can use the same distinction when it obtains advice externally: designate the person who receives the advice and the person who approves the commitment.
Responsibility also needs clarity at the top. Warner Chappell Music chair and chief executive officer Guy Moot joined the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) board a week after becoming the company’s sole chair on October 1. Company leadership and an industry board seat are distinct responsibilities. An independent’s role descriptions should likewise distinguish decisions made for its own business from participation in wider industry bodies.
Apply that discipline to the next catalogue proposal. Name its commercial owner, its reviewer and its final approver before negotiations proceed. If one person occupies all three positions, have that person complete each task explicitly. The immediate staffing decision is whether the business lacks opportunities, lacks the capacity to evaluate them or lacks someone accountable for delivery. Hire against that specific gap.
