Kobalt is a leading independent rights management and publishing company that is making waves around the world. Although Wired magazine in 2015 called it “the most important music company you’ve never heard of,” a lot has changed since then. Today, everyone who’s anyone in the industry knows Kobalt. Founded in 200 by Willard Ahdritz, a saxophone player and jazz aficionado from Sweden with the goal of helping musicians guide their careers independent of record labels, the company now employs about 200 people in countries around the world.

When chief commercial officer Simon Dennett joined the firm  Kobalt in 2006 “we were radically different in size,” he says. “It wasn’t the many hundreds of people we have today.” The team was selling very hard back then, and though it still does today, it probably doesn’t need to. “We’re now well-known in the space,” Dennett adds. Today Kobalt represents more than 40% of the top 100 songs and albums in the U.S. and U.K. “The level of ambition and mission holds through today the same way it did 11 years ago, but we’ve expanded a great deal.” MaxTheTrax editor in chief Paula Parisi quizzed Dennett on the current expansion and where it’s taking the company.

MaxTheTrax: How is Kobalt different than other companies providing support services to songwriters and artists?

Simon Dennett: At one end of the market you have mass distribution, and players like Tunecore, and at the other end you’ve got the majors, and what they’re selling is a fundamental ability to manage global releasing – including physical, mechanical and associated services. We have AWAL, which plays I the middle. It’s a curated platform that targets people who are really taking their music careers seriously, but are at the early- to mid-stage of their career. AWOL provides tools that help artists and creators accelerate their careers, providing an ecosystem that allows them to grow and transition into bigger, fuller deals. We provide a very artist-friendly approach that doesn’t lock in rights, doesn’t restrain anyone’s options in the future, and is really aligned with the Kobalt group ethos of putting the creator first.

MaxTheTrax: What does AWAL do for artists?

Simon Dennett: AWAL will distribute your music globally for you, to all of the digital platforms — more than 200 worldwide —  and make sure it’s done right, with all your metadata correct. Then you move on to how do I get heard? And we have a whole host of analytical tools, and that’s what the AWAL app was built to provide.

MaxTheTrax: Can you talk a bit about what the AWAL app does?

Simon Dennett:  In 2017 we launched the AWAL app, a market-leading insight-driven product that’s very innovative on the master side of the business. We’ve done a lot of back-end engineering for AWAL, which is very data-driven, but the app is creator-facing and puts a lot of information literally at your fingertips. It lets you monitor your business activity in real time,  from your mobile device, using a whole host of analytical tools. These tools allow creators to understand the demographic of their fans, the location of their fans, the money that they’re going to earn, where it’s coming from. Basically, all the interesting data you could hope to glean from global consumption. So, you can look at a simple graph that says the majority of our fans on Spotify in Denmark are 25-30 year olds, but might be even more interesting to see that those 18-25 are the fastest-growing. Those are the types of things you can pull out from our insights. So it’s more than static graphs, it’s insights artists can use to figure out how to design and further promote their content.  We’re really proud of it.

MaxTheTrax: Global streaming subscriptions nearly doubled, from 67.5 million to 100.4 million this past year. And Kobalt claims to be able to help many seemingly “under the radar” artists get tens of millions of streams across, say, Spotify and Apple Music, creating a sustainable income for them without a radio hit or a record deal?

Simon Dennett: The reasons you don’t stay independent in the music industry is you’re looking for someone to help you succeed. What the AWAL platform is designed for is to give the tools and techniques and support needed to succeed, and to sustain an independent career, rather than folding into a major label system whereby you have to sign multi-year, multi-album deals. So putting the creator first and allowing them to stay independent is what AWAL is.

MaxTheTrax: And you also have AMRA, to collect streaming royalties?

Simon Dennett: AMRA is a big infrastructure project, solving the global collection challenges of digital. A good analogy is building all the highways and roads to connect the cities. That’s a big driver for change for us as a business, and it has huge potential. It’s ex-US, digital income outside the US. There are some huge populations of people out there that have historically been difficult to reach – billions of people – and they’re walking around with a digital device in their pocket that is absolutely perfect for the consumption of music, a phone, so the challenge is how to engage them. Large proportions of them are in markets the industry is not currently seeing huge revenue from, but we believe that can change. It may not change in the next month, or the next year, or even the next two years. But these people will come online and the revenue will be real, and it will be material. Establishing an AMRA network that will be in place to monetize it is critical.

MaxTheTrax: Like where?

Simon Dennett: I’m talking about the next-wave markets, the BRIC territories – Brazil, Russia, India and China – the emerging economies that represent a whole new wave of music consumer. So the macro view – not only what creators need today, but what will they need tomorrow. How is the industry changing around them and how do we anticipate that. As their needs evolve we need to make sure we have a service that evolves with them.

MaxTheTrax: How has the rapid rise in streaming affected your business, or changed your practices?

Simon Dennett: This company was founded on the basis of digital, so we’ve been better prepared for some of the changes than others. But the main thing is, keeping the macro view — not only what creators need today, but what will they need tomorrow. How is the industry changing around them and how do we anticipate that. As their needs evolve we need to make sure we have a service that evolves with them. We are always adapting. We run hard and we run fast. It’s hard to pick out one way things have changed. I guess one thing would be that the acceleration of change, and us being at the forefront of new technologies has prompted us to consider providing services to other publishers. That’s something we’re open to doing. It’s about recognizing that we have great tools and techniques that can benefit the greater industry. Providing access to that either directly or via B-to-B partners is an example. These tools we’ve developed are really designed for this sort of metered world of real time activity that is a byproduct of streaming.