Billboard honors industry veterans

Music-business awards can sound like inside baseball, but these two land in places that actually shape how artists get paid and how careers last. One honor is going to Guy Moot, who runs Warner Chappell Music. The other is going to Terry McBride and Mark Jowett, the founders of Nettwerk Music Group. Put together, the news is basically a snapshot of where power sits in music right now — in song rights on one side and independent infrastructure on the other. ### Who got honored? Guy Moot was named the 2026 recipient of the Music Industry Trusts Award, a big U.K. industry prize that will be presented on November 9 at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London. Separately, Terry McBride and Mark Jowett will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2026 Libera Awards on June 8 at Gotham Hall in New York. ### Why is Guy Moot’s award a big deal? Because this is not just another executive trophy. Moot is the first music publisher to receive the MITS honor. That matters because publishers have often been less visible than label chiefs or artist managers, even though publishing controls the songs themselves — the part of the business that keeps earning across streaming, radio, film, TV, games, and live performance. (billboard.com) ### What does a publisher actually control? A publisher handles songwriting rights — who wrote the composition, who owns what share, and how money gets collected when that song gets used. Warner Chappell is Warner Music Group’s publishing arm, so Moot’s world is less about master recordings and more about the underlying songs. In a streaming-first business, that side has become more strategic, not less, because every sync placement, catalog deal, and royalty dispute starts with the composition. (musicbusinessworldwide.com) ### Why Nettwerk’s founders? McBride and Jowett are getting recognized for building one of the better-known independent music companies out of Vancouver since 1984. Nettwerk grew from a label into a broader artist-services business spanning management, publishing, and international operations. That kind of company matters because indie music is no longer just a scrappy alternative to majors — it is a durable lane with its own global financing, distribution, and career-development model. (wmg.com) ### Why do the Libera Awards matter here? The Libera Awards are A2IM’s flagship awards for the independent sector, and the 2026 ceremony is the 15th edition. So this is the indie world honoring two people who helped define what a long-running independent company can look like — not just a cool label, but a system that can break artists, manage them, publish them, and survive industry format changes. (news.a2im.org) ### What ties these two stories together? They point to the parts of music that sit behind the celebrity layer. Moot represents the growing status of publishing — the song-rights machinery. McBride and Jowett represent independent ownership — the ability to build outside the major-label structure and still matter globally. Those are different businesses, but both are about control, longevity, and leverage. (news.a2im.org) ### Why now? Because the industry has spent years shifting toward assets that hold value over time. Songs travel. Catalogs compound. Independent companies that own relationships and rights can stay relevant longer than hype cycles do. These awards are ceremonial, sure, but they also read like a scoreboard for what the business currently respects most. (musicbusinessworldwide.com) ### Bottom line? This is really about two kinds of music power getting their flowers. The people behind songs are getting more visible, and the people who proved you can build outside the major-label machine are getting institutional credit for it. That is a pretty clear signal about where the business thinks its durable value lives. (musicbusinessworldwide.com)