Jesse Willoughby

GM, Kobalt Nashville

Highlight Reel

Key Signings: Shane McAnally and SMACK Songs, Dierks Bentley, Rob Hatch, Little Louder Music (Eric Church), Michael Hardy (via Relative Music), Gordie Sampson and Tommy Lee James (with Still Working Music), Combustion Music, BOOM Music (pubco founded by Keith Urban, Ross Copperman and Joe Fisher).

New Hires: Over the last year, we’ve brought on Kevin Lane (previously with BMG) to our creative team and former Sony/ATV exec Mark Abramowitz to handle pop signings and creative.

To what extent/degree are your writers working on projects outside of the country genre?
We’ve got an incredibly diverse roster from a traditional Nashville perspective, and are actively signing writers and artists that fall outside of commercial country, as Nashville has a wealth of creative talent across the board. We’ve recently signed Devon Gilfillian, who just signed with Capitol Records, as well as Patrick Droney, an incredibly talented artist we’re all very excited about. Creative diversity matters to us, whether that be with Trent Dabbs, who wrote the Kacey Musgraves song “High Horse” but also has the current American Authors single, or the flip side, someone like David Hodges, who comes from the more pop space but is now finding a great amount of success writing for the Nashville market. We also recently signed The Shadowboxers, who just came off a tour with Justin Timberlake—so our focus and priorities are for all genres.