Katie Welle, who is today SVP of Creative A&R at Sony Music Publishing, has been involved in a mightily impressive array of success stories across her career.
Her highlights include working closely with Odd Future at the hip-hop collective’s inception to, more recently, signing hit songwriter Charlie Handsome, who co-wrote Post Malone’s Billboard Hot 100 No.1 I Had Some Help, and 2024 Grammy Songwriter of the Year Theron Thomas, amongst many others.
Welle signed Jeff Bhasker’s first deal at SMP, the Grammy-winning producer/songwriter well known for his work with artists including Kanye West, Harry Styles and Jay-Z, plus pop writers extraordinaire J Kash, Tyler Johnson and Mikky Ekko. One of her newest signings is Teezo Touchdown, who has featured on tracks by Tyler, the Creator, Travis Scott and Drake.
Welle grew up in Indiana, where she didn’t know the music business existed. So, even though she was a rabid music fan who obsessively dug into credits, she thought she’d do something else with her life and decided to pursue a career in international relations.
However, after meeting an A&R who worked at Epic Records and realizing that a job in A&R was a real thing, she tracked down the contact and secured an internship based on her music taste.
An assistant job shortly followed and soon, Welle was going to five shows a week on LA’s Sunset Strip, meeting other A&Rs and getting absorbed into the community. The first artist she signed was Hitmaka, who was then called Yung Berg, and her career path was set.
Welle remembers: “At the time, my boss was Keith Naftaly at Epic Records, and I was always being like, ‘I want to do A&R.’ The best advice he gave me, which I still think about to this day, was ‘Well, no one’s going to stop you.’ That’s what A&R is all about. It’s entrepreneurial. You have to make your own business, create your own activity, and have a vision to make it happen. You just have to go out and do it.”
After Epic, Welle moved over to Sony Publishing before getting the itch to return to the label world in a more senior position, where she could experience what it was like to put together a release from start to finish and break new artists.
A six-year stint at RCA Records followed before Welle returned to Sony Publishing in 2020.
Here, we chat with her about her career journey, lessons learned along the way, the evolution of publishing, and much more.
You returned to music publishing four years ago after a stint back at labels. What do you enjoy most about your job?
I really love being a music publisher. At the end of the day, whatever play I’m making, if a Sony writer is involved, and that could be someone signed anywhere in the world, I’m doing something that’s good for them and their part of the equation; I’m doing my job. That leaves limitless possibilities for everything exciting that’s happening in music.
I also feel that I can really get involved in the DNA of music. And it doesn’t matter if I’m not the A&R for one particular artist, I can have an impact via the songwriters and other artists I work with via their songs, sessions and connections. It’s so fun to watch a landscape of music and know that I had an impact on these releases in some way.
What’s your approach to A&R? How do you get the best out of the creatives that you’re working with?
A lot of times I view it as coaching. Our main job is to bring opportunities and help add value to their career, but the other side of it is giving advice on how best to approach a situation, manage a relationship, get the most out of an opportunity or help them see what they might be missing.
Let’s say we set up a session, I might say, ‘I think the best result could come from approaching it like this’ or ‘this person is really good at this, so let them lead there’ and ‘I think you could be helpful by doing XYZ’.
Can you pinpoint the biggest lessons you’ve learned across your career in the various different roles you’ve held?
When you first start out and don’t really know all the obstacles that exist, you have this fearlessness to push through, no matter if there’s some authority figure that you’re contradicting or disagreeing with.
It’s a tough industry and as you go through it, it can be discouraging. Looking back now, that’s the thing I tried to instil in myself. There’s examples in the music industry all the time of surprises and new artists breaking through. The disruptions that happen all the time are so inspiring.
Who knew that Kendrick and Drake would completely disrupt everything this year and change the conversation and landscape of what’s charting and what people are talking about. It’s about keeping that spirit of possibility. Also, trusting myself to know that, for the most part, if I really love a song, or an artist really speaks to me, others will feel the same way.
It seems like it’s changing now, but historically, A&R has been a very male dominated field and a hard job for women to get into. Was that your experience?
Oftentimes, I’ve been aware that I was the only woman in the room, but I never really saw it as an obstacle. I think that we just keep soldiering on and try not to dwell too much on what might feel like walls. My most profound experience was being really pregnant and in the studio. I definitely stood out. But I’ve always felt welcome, even then.
“The space that needs work, that has not changed, is women in production roles.”
Now, I have more female colleagues around me, although that could be because I’m in publishing, where there are more female creatives. There are more and more examples of women in leadership. Right now, it’s such an incredible time for female artists. The space that needs work, that has not changed, is women in production roles.
Do you have any answers for how to change that?
It starts really early on in terms of supporting the skill set. I meet so many young men who are like, ‘I’m a producer, I want to make beats’, and there are less women who come to me with that ambition. Part of it starts really early, giving them more examples of someone they can look up to who does that. It’s going to take new generations in future to build upon that until we really see any progress being made.
How do you see the role of a publisher evolving? Do you see any changes happening?
What’s happened in publishing, and this is why I’m best suited as a publisher, is that sessions and creative work are very largely in the hands of publishers. While labels absolutely get involved in that, there are so many other things they have to take care of in terms of releases.
Publishers are becoming the first step when it comes to the creation of songs. It’s always fluctuating but a lot of artists are self contained and they’re not always looking for their label to provide them with songs. So, as publishers, we hold this knowledge about what happens in the studio, in terms of, ‘This person is great with drums’; ‘This person is amazing with melodies’; ‘This person is great with lyrics’. Before, label A&R was more involved in that.
What is the most exciting development happening in today’s music business?
The barrier to entry with streaming. You can be a kid in Indiana, like I was, and I didn’t have this at my fingertips then. Nowadays you can hear a song from Brazil or Nigeria and it can be your favorite song in the world; you’re exposed to so much. That leads to artists and fans taking the power, and that affects the landscape more than anything.
WHAT’s the most challenging thing about working in today’s music business?
The other side of that is the sheer volume and what it takes to cut through, the attention span and what artists have to keep up with in terms of their visibility. Once you release a song, you’re competing with basically every song out there in the world – and catalog too. It’s all compounding amongst itself for attention.
What are some of the ways that you’re helping the writers and artists you work with cut through all of that?
For us, fundamentally, our job is to put our songwriters and artists in the best environment to make their best work possible. That comes from being very strategic about and listening to what they need and what can support them. Sometimes, they need space to write on their own until they need somebody.
“It’s about being very strategic and connecting the right dots.”
Other times, that means that out of the millions of producers and artists in the world, picking the one we think they’ll have success with or that will be really fulfilling to them. It’s about being very strategic and connecting the right dots.
What would change about the music industry and why?
Normalizing seeing women as calling the creative shots, instead of it being an exception to the rule. We’re seeing that with artists but in non-performing producer roles. Also, giving artists patience to grow. If the first album or songs they release don’t chart immediately, be patient to let them grow and develop.
If you could go back to the beginning of your career and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?
I see it with executives I work with today, they all want to know the head of every company and the CEOs, and those are great relationships, but really, when you’re with your peers, you can make magical things happen. As you guys grow together, the power in those relationships is going to be there for a long time.
WHAT ARE YOUR future plans and ambitions?
My focus has always been whatever I’m doing right now, whatever tasks are on my plate for today, for the year, I just want to do them really well. That always leads to the next best thing, or leads to lots of opportunities. Also, I’m grateful to [Sony Music Publishing CEO] Jon Platt for his belief and encouragement in me as a leader. One other thing I’m striving for in this current moment is bringing my best as a leader and mentor to others.
Virgin Music Group is the global independent music division of Universal Music Group, which brings together UMG’s label and artist service businesses including Virgin and Ingrooves.Music Business Worldwide
