Natalie Jacobs

For over 20 years, Natalie Jacobs worked with Warner Music Group at the intersection of music, data and technology, spanning label operations, publishing administration, corporate data strategy and music tech product development. She has overseen a $17 million portfolio of music tech and data projects, giving her a panoramic view of how a decision in one part of the music ecosystem ripples through the rest, from the C-suite to the person entering catalog data. That breadth, working inside every layer of the system rather than observing it from one seat, is what led her to both consulting and teaching.

Jacobs is the founder of Equalizer Consulting, a metadata strategy and rights management consultancy serving labels, publishers, collective management organizations, music technology companies and independent artists. She built the firm around a straightforward conviction, that the knowledge and infrastructure that protects music and its revenue shouldn't be reserved for those with major-label resources behind them. Today, Jacobs advises global companies on the operational and human layer of clean data: the standards, workflows and internal training that make good metadata sustainable rather than a one-time fix. She also works directly with independent artists on catalog audits, rights registration and metadata, the infrastructure that determines whether their music gets discovered, their royalties get paid and their ownership is on record.

Jacobs is a professional member of The Recording Academy, a contributing author at Digital Music News and co-founder of Pitch Perfect, a community for women entrepreneurs in music. She has presented on metadata operations for the Recording Industry Association of Japan, spoken at Music Business Association and Production Music conferences, and shared her industry and entrepreneurial journey on various podcasts. She is a regular guest voice at industry conferences and educational programs on music data, rights and career reinvention.