Downtown Music Holdings (Downtown) has named Molly Neuman as president of global music royalty collection and publishing administration solutions company Songtrust, effective immediately. The move was announced by Downtown CEO Justin Kalifowitz and Downtown chief strategy officer Joe Conyers III, who co-founded Songtrust together in 2011.
An official press released stated that Neuman, “will lead all day-to-day operations for Songtrust, including client relations, product, and engineering, as well as society and services relations.”
Kalifowitz and Conyers will continue to serve on the Songtrust Board of Directors while the company remains a wholly-owned independent subsidiary of Downtown.
Speaking about the appointment, Justin Kalifowitz said: “Molly’s leadership has been an essential element in Songtrust’s tremendous growth over the past two years. She is genuinely invested in the success of our songwriters and publisher clients, having been both herself, and is driven to help achieve Songtrust’s goals of delivering equity and innovation to the music rights ecosystem. As we continue to expand the broader Downtown portfolio, Joe and I have no doubt that Songtrust will continue to flourish as Molly assumes her new role as president.”
Joe Conyers III added: “Molly is an innovative, thoughtful, strong, leader, and a true advocate for creative rights. I have no doubt Molly will continue to push Songtrust to fulfill its promise to democratise and increase transparency within global music royalty collection.”
Since joining Songtrust in 2017 as global head of business development, Neuman has played a key role developing much of the company’s significant growth in recent years, leading the global business development, sales and marketing teams.
Neuman’s tenure at Songtrust has included triple-digit growth, with more than 2 million songs under its management from 26,000 publishers and 205,000 songwriters across 64 countries.
Neuman said: “I am elated to be the new President of Songtrust, in part because I am deeply, personally connected to Songtrust’s core mission to support creators, songwriters, producers, composers, their representatives and the businesses who work with them in accessing the money they are due. I am grateful for the confidence placed in me by Justin and Joe, and remain committed to continuing to grow the Songtrust client base, drive our technological edge, and continuously improve our industry leading processes and global collection capabilities. We have an incredible team in place to make this possible and I am honored to work alongside them.”
Prior to joining Songtrust, Neuman was head of music at Kickstarter and interim president and vice president of the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) and has held senior roles in label relations at Rhapsody International and eMusic, in addition to serving on the boards of SoundExchange and A2IM.