Laurent Hubert is the CEO of Kobalt Music Group, headquartered in New York, NY.
He is a private pilot and enjoys flying in his free time. Hubert was born in France and today resides in the United States.
Hubert was previously President of Marketing & Creative at BMG Rights Management, before joining Kobalt in 2016.
Laurent Hubert: Career history
Laurent Hubert began his professional career in the sales division of Club Med., an all-inclusive resort company.
He worked at the company in various positions for eight years, originally as a Marketing Analyst and finally as the Marketing Director. In these roles, Hubert created new business verticals and refocused brand visibility marketing. Co-workers from his time with the company have repeatedly applauded Hubert’s results-driven mindset and describe him as “the kind of person one wants on a results-driven team”.
After leaving Club Med, Hubert moved to BMG Music Publishing Worldwide. He served in various roles including Executive Assistant to COO, SVP – International, and COO & EVP.
Hubert notably reinvigorated the classical music business at BMG, energizing staff and changing the company’s culture. He left BMG Music Publishing in 2007 after leading it to record profits.
In 2007, Hubert moved to Parthian Strategies, a media advisory boutique, as a Partner. At Parthian, Hubert spent most of his time valuing catalogs for the company’s financial sponsors. He specialized in strategic planning and IP management.
In 2009, Hubert became COO – North America at BMG Rights Management, which replaced BMG Music Publishing after the latter’s catalog was incorporated into Universal via UMPG.
In 2012, Hubert became the President of Creative and Marketing at BMG.
As most of its assets had been sold to Universal, the new BMG was considered a small independent music publisher. By the time Hubert departed BMG in 2016, it was once again considered to be one of the largest global music publishers.
In 2016, Hubert joined Kobalt Music Group and was quickly promoted to the roles of President and Chief Revenue Officer.
In 2020, he assumed the position of CEO. Kobalt is an independent rights management and music publishing company, which has also offered/offers label services, neighboring rights, recorded music services, and other technology platforms for artists.
Hubert played a key role in brokering the sale of Kobalt’s recorded music services and neighboring rights divisions to Sony in 2021 for a reported $430 million. Kobalt’s catalog includes music from Prince, Paul McCartney, Bob Marley, John Denver, and Tiesto, among others.
Francisco Partners became the majority owner in Kobalt in 2022.
Laurent Hubert: Professional philosophy
In a 2021 interview with Music Business Worldwide, Laurent Hubert said: “I think [the arrival of Blackstone et al in music] is an opportunity, frankly, for the industry to be stronger on defense of copyrights – especially in some cases when we have confrontations with the DSPs – and also to make sure that creators are paid what they deserve.
“Merck and Hipgnosis are making a good point: the song is the most important currency in the business today, and we need to make sure our writers are being paid fairly.”
“You have an explosion of income sources [for music rights] today, alongside an explosion of consumption. If as [a collection society] you don’t have the ability to harness the cost of collecting in this complex market effectively, you will quickly drown. We think that many collection societies in the world today are ill-equipped to bear that challenge.”
Laurent Hubert
He added: “You have an explosion of income sources [for music rights] today, alongside an explosion of consumption. If as [a collection society] you don’t have the ability to harness the cost of collecting in this complex [market] effectively, you will quickly drown.
“We think that many collection societies in the world today are ill-equipped to bear that challenge, and that some of those collection societies – including some of the large collection societies – may not meet that challenge.
“We see [Kobalt-owned] AMRA as a natural vehicle to provide the ability to collect globally through a single license.”Music Business Worldwide