Josh Van Valkenburg named president of Universal Music Publishing's Nashville arm

Josh Van Valkenburg has been named president of Universal Music Publishing Group Nashville, starting on 4 January 2027. Billboard reported the appointment on 10 November 2026.

Music publishing is the side of the industry that looks after songs rather than recordings. Publishers license songs for records, films, adverts and streaming, and they collect the royalties that follow. The Nashville office handles songwriters and catalogue linked to country music.

Van Valkenburg will be based in Nashville and will report to Jody Gerson, chairman and chief executive of Universal Music Publishing Group. He takes over from Troy Tomlinson, who has led the Nashville company as chairman and chief executive since 2019.

Tomlinson is not leaving the company's orbit. He moves into an exclusive advisory role supporting Universal Music Publishing Group, its songwriters and its artists. Before 2019, he was president and chief executive of Sony/ATV Nashville, a post he held from 2005. In 2024 he received the CMA songwriter advocate award from the Country Music Association.

Van Valkenburg's career has been spent largely in publishing. He began at EMI Music Publishing in 2006 and joined its A&R team, the group that finds and develops songwriters, as creative manager in 2008. He became creative director at Sony/ATV in 2012. He has led the creative efforts of Sony Music Publishing Nashville since 2015, and was promoted to executive vice president of creative there in 2021. That was his most recent role before this appointment.

He also sits on the board of directors of the Country Music Association, the trade body that runs the CMA Awards.

For the songwriters on the roster, the person at the top shapes which writers get signed and which songs are pitched to artists. A change of leader in Nashville therefore reaches the desks of working writers, and the people who help them make a living, as well as the company's boardroom.