Ben Craven Email & Phone Number

United Kingdom

Currently working on:• Real-time Data • Music rights data model• Scaled licensing & contracts solutions with downstream operational automation• External data-lake integrations for the industry.

• Initiated a New Music Rights Data Model: Started drafting requirements for a new music rights data model, focusing on how we store, apply, and report on music rights. This multi-year project requires cross-functional support from copyright teams, rights management, content ingestion, and product legal, aiming to improve data accuracy and transparency within the industry.• Led a Global Team of 12: Oversaw a team of up to 12 professionals across the UK, US, and India, focusing on data ingestion and reporting processes related to content and royalties. Fostered collaboration and streamlined workflows to enhance efficiency and output quality.• Technical Lead in Licensing Deal Negotiations: Played a key role in negotiating our most valuable licensing agreements from a technical standpoint. Ensured all technical requirements were accurately assessed and provided internal solutions, measuring the costs associated with these requests to inform value exchange discussions with partners.• Content Quality Index: Oversaw a project aimed at measuring the quality of content from inbound rights holders through the supply chain, creating a quality index that enhanced our ability to evaluate and prioritise content submissions effectively.• Expanded Spam and Bot Detection Systems: Led the expansion of our spam and bot detection systems to cover more ByteDance music services, ensuring data integrity and protecting revenue streams across the platform.

London, United Kingdom

• Key Role in Record Label Deal Negotiations: Represented ByteDance’s technical capabilities in major record label negotiations, ensuring deals reflect our strengths and utilizing our platform to secure favorable terms while aligning technology with industry standards.• Built the Royalty & Insights Platform from the Ground Up: Designed and launched a full-scale Royalty and Insights reporting platform that automates the creation, validation, and distribution of tens of thousands of royalty statements and reports monthly for TikTok, Douyin, TikTok Music, Resso, CapCut, and more. Consolidated business logic to ensure a reliable, scalable solution. Led development end-to-end as architect and product manager, with PRDs that kept the team aligned. This platform powers royalty reporting across publishing and recorded music and supplies data to ByteDance’s SoundOn.• Kickstarted Industry Reporting for ByteDance Products: Established reporting formats for licensing agreements, enabling TikTok, Douyin, and Resso to deliver industry-standard reports for the first time, bringing ByteDance products into compliance and supporting transparency with the music industry.• Led a Global Team Supporting Business Development: Built and led a team of five data and reporting specialists managing internal and external data requests, providing insights that support business development and data-driven negotiations.• Built a Scalable Data Warehouse & Reporting Infrastructure: Designed and implemented a data warehouse with pipelines into a ClickHouse OLAP platform, giving BD teams easy access to music performance and deal insights while validating outbound royalty statements for accuracy.• Ensured Integrity in Industry Reporting: Developed systems to detect and remove spam, bot, and suspicious activity in music delivery data, safeguarding the integrity of industry reports and ensuring only legitimate usage is compensated.

Technical Partner Support• Supported music partners (labels, publishers, and artists) in adopting YouTube’s suite of tools, such as Content Manager and Creator Studio, to optimize content management.• Conducted complex data analysis on rights holder conflicts, resolving issues and ensuring accurate content ownership and revenue distribution.• Set up bespoke data pipelines for labels, directly connecting our data to their cloud platforms for enhanced analytics and reporting on their catalogue's performance.Product Feature Feedback and Enhancement• Worked closely with internal Product and Engineering teams to provide partner feedback on YouTube Music features, advocating for product improvements based on real-world partner needs.• Go between from Engineering and Business teams to ensure that critical issues or feature development is effectively communicated.

London, United Kingdom

Led livestream production in a “Technical Director” capacity, working closely with content creators, production teams, and outside broadcast companies to deliver some of the internet's biggest livestream events.BT Sport • Directed livestreams for UEFA Champions League & Europa League Finals (2016-2018), leading testing for the first 4K sporting event on YouTube in 2017 (Real Madrid vs. Juventus). • Partnered with the BT Sport team to pitch and secure rights for subsequent UCL and ELF seasons (2018+). • Tested SCTE-35 for Dynamic Ad-Insertion (DAI) across multiple live events, improving ad capabilities. • Oversaw capacity planning with infrastructure, ISP, and CDN teams to ensure smooth, scalable streams.Creator Events • Supported record-breaking PPV event, KSI vs. Logan Paul, the largest amateur boxing match on YouTube. • Collaborated with top creators (PewDiePie, Jacksepticeye, Emma Blackery, Markiplier) on the Cringemas livestream, raising over $1M for RED.org. • Produced the Sidemen FC vs. YouTube Allstars charity matches (2016-2018).Royal Events • Directed live broadcasts for high-profile royal weddings, including Prince Harry & Meghan Markle and Princess Eugenie of York & Jack Brooksbank.Noteworthy Contributions • Worked closely with engineering teams on field testing for new live features, identifying a Samsung TV bug in decoding VP9 4K streams. • Built strong industry relationships, coordinating with hardware partners to test and validate equipment and organizing “LiveCon” events in London and New York for livestream partners. • Developed a real-time monitoring app (Python + Angular3) to track concurrent viewers across simulcast live events.

London, United Kingdom

Supporting UK Music Partners: Worked with labels, publishers, chart partners, and creators to maximize their use of YouTube's tools and services, including: • YouTube Creator Studio, Content Manager • DDEX ingestion and Rights Management • YouTube APIs for efficient content managementBusiness Support for YouTube Red & YouTube Music Launch: Provided critical support for launching YouTube Red (now YouTube Music), helping to bridge content management needs and industry partnerships as the platform evolved.Leading Global Tools & Infrastructure Efforts: • Secured headcount to create a “Content Tools” product and engineering team within YouTube’s Content Org. • Prototyped tools and automated workflows with Python and AngularJS on GCP/AppEngine, optimizing internal processes. • Fun fact: Once submitted a CL (with tests) for an internal tool that made it into a YouTube build.

Bournemouth, United Kingdom

Led the Development for 200+ Labels: Managed the creation of a direct-to-fan e-commerce and fulfilment platform for over 200 independent record labels, including artists like James Blake, Disclosure, Burial, Martyn, and Skream & Benga.Oversaw Requirements Gathering: Took charge of gathering requirements and writing specifications, working hand-in-hand with the local engineering team to make sure everything aligned with our vision. Handled the backlog of feature priorities, making sure our requirements gathering reflected what mattered most to our labels and artists.Revamped the Database System: Redesigned the internal database to handle new product data needs and built a direct integration with the e-commerce platform that automatically created label stores filled with their products.Streamlined Fulfilment Processes: Developed custom integrations with warehousing and courier delivery software to boost efficiency and ensure timely order turnaround.