Vice President, Data Governance & Strategy

We are UMG, the Universal Music Group. We are the world’s leading music company. In everything we do, we are committed to artistry, innovation and entrepreneurship. We own and operate a broad array of businesses engaged in recorded music, music publishing, merchandising, and audiovisual content in more than 60 countries. We identify and develop recording artists and songwriters, and we produce, distribute and promote the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful music to delight and entertain fans around the world.
 

How You’ll Lead:

The Vice President, Data Governance & Strategy is a senior executive leader responsible for defining and operationalizing a comprehensive enterprise data governance and data strategy across UMG. This role ensures that critical data assets—spanning music rights, royalties, digital consumption, fan engagement, e-commerce and merchandise (online and on-tour), physical products, and artist development—are accurate, trusted, compliant, and strategically leveraged.

Operating at the intersection of business strategy, technology, privacy, and partnerships, the VP champions a data-driven culture and enables scalable, compliant data usage that fuels monetization, fan growth, and innovation in a rapidly evolving global music ecosystem.

How You’ll Create:

Strategic Leadership

• Define and drive the enterprise data strategy to support business growth, monetization of music assets, and fan engagement.
• Identify and assess new fan data sources and partnership opportunities aligned with the enterprise data strategy, accounting for label and regional differences.
• Align data initiatives with music industry trends, business priorities, and evolving digital platforms, including streaming, social platforms, AI-enabled services, and emerging distribution models.
• Partner with C-level executives and senior leaders across Legal, Finance, Marketing, Commercial, HR, and Technology to integrate data insights into strategic and operational decision-making.
• Serve as a trusted executive advisor on data value, risk, and opportunity across the organization.

Data Governance

• Develop and implement a robust, scalable data governance framework covering:
  • Fan, CRM, and e-commerce data
  • Digital consumption and DSP reporting
  • Artist, repertoire, and product metadata
  • Financial, royalty, and rights data
• Establish clear data ownership, stewardship, quality standards, and accountability models across business units and regions.
• Standardize data definitions and identifiers (e.g., ISRC, ISWC, IPI) to ensure consistency, transparency, and auditability across systems and partners.
• Ensure compliance with global music rights regulations, licensing requirements, and data privacy laws (e.g., GDPR, CCPA), in close partnership with Legal, Privacy, and Security teams.

Collaboration & Enablement

• Work cross-functionally with legal, operations, analytics, product, and technology teams to operationalize governance standards through platforms, processes, and workflows.
• Promote data literacy, stewardship, and accountability across departments and business units.
• Lead organizational change to position data as a managed enterprise asset, enabling trusted insights and scalable innovation.

Technology, Innovation & Future-Readiness

• Evaluate, select, and deploy enterprise data governance and cataloging technologies supporting discovery, classification, lineage, quality monitoring, and access controls.
• Drive automation and scalability in data ingestion, normalization, and reconciliation from digital platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, TikTok, and emerging channels.

AI Readiness, Responsible AI & Privacy by Design

• Facilitate in establishing AI-ready data foundations, ensuring data used for advanced analytics, machine learning, and generative AI is accurate, well-governed, traceable, and ethically sourced.
• Partner with Legal, Privacy, Security, and Technology teams to define and operationalize AI governance frameworks, including controls for data usage, consent, provenance, bias mitigation, explainability, and auditability.
• Embed privacy-by-design and privacy-by-default principles into AI-enabled initiatives involving fan, artist, and partner data, ensuring compliance with global privacy regulations and contractual obligations.
• Play an active role in defining policies and guardrails for the responsible use of generative AI across the music