Billboard’s 2026 Top Music Lawyers Revealed
Categoria: Musica
The savviest legal minds in the business are advising superstars, guiding executives, buying catalogs — and watching over their shoulders as AI rises.
Por Billboard | 20/07/2026
It all begins with a song, goes the music business maxim. Getting paid for a song all begins with the copyright, say the lawyers. The ability of creators to protect their work through copyright is so fundamental that the legal concept appears in the U.S. Constitution, which grants Congress the power “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” The Founding Fathers, however, never anticipated generative artificial intelligence. Generative AI tools used in music have evolved by ingesting massive amounts of data about songs originally created — and copyrighted — by songwriters, artists, recording companies and music publishers. It is transformational technology — but some have called it digital theft. Related Merger Mania Is Reshaping the Music Industry With These Law Firms Leading Negotiations Desiigner Arrested on Domestic Violence Charge in South Carolina DJ Quik Says His Son 'Made a Mistake' Following Murder Conviction, Pleads With Fans to Stop Asking About It What’s undeniable is that the issue has consumed the legal community’s attention in recent years, including many of the attorneys chosen for Billboard ’s 2026 Top Music Lawyers list. The attorneys listed here — nominated by their firms and peers and chosen by Billboard editors — guide superstars and industry-driving companies. They negotiate recording deals, global tours and catalog sales, and their legal savvy is essential to the music business now more than ever. “I am sure it comes as no surprise to anyone that artificial intelligence continues to present the most important legal issues facing the music industry,” says Venable partner J. Douglas Baldridge, who has also worked as the in-house counsel for Taylor Swift’s 13 Management. A little more than two years ago, the three major music groups — Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group — were each plaintiffs in lawsuits against leading music AI companies Suno and Udio, alleging their technology had unlawfully copied the groups’ songs to train AI models to generate music that could “saturate the market with machine-generated content that will directly compete with” human artists. Many AI companies argue that copyright law’s fair use doctrine protects such training, because it transforms those millions of songs into something entirely new. But musicians and labels say that provision was not intended to allow a trillion-dollar industry to be built on the backs of unpaid artists. Warner Music Group has since struck licensing deals to settle its suits against Suno and Udio, while Universal has done the same with Udio. Sony and Universal continue their legal actions against Suno while Sony is still in court against Udio. Music companies and trade groups, trying to avoid the mistakes of previous technological revolutions and recognizing it’s better to pay copyright owners than lawyers, have increasingly sought partnerships in which AI content can be licensed with limits on how the tec