Counsel for music rights, from reclaiming them to selling the catalog.
Whether you are reclaiming a copyright, collecting what you are owed, or buying or selling a catalog, the questions are the same: who owns the rights, what do they earn, and what are they worth. I answer them with a background few music lawyers have, including six years running royalty operations inside the business before I practiced law.
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Counsel across the life of a copyright.
I work both sides of the table. I have filed the termination notice that returns a copyright to its author, and I have run the diligence that prices a catalog for sale. The same command of rights, royalties, and value serves the artist getting paid and the fund writing the check.
Termination and recapture
- §§203 and 304 termination analysis and timing
- Preparing and serving notices
- Gap-grant and successor-ownership questions
- What a recaptured right is worth and how to monetize it
Royalty audits and recovery
- Statement review across PROs, publishers, SoundExchange, the MLC, and international CMOs
- Underpayment claims and recoveries
- Registration cleanup so you are paid correctly going forward
Deals when rights come back
- Licensing and administration of recaptured copyrights
- Sale or retention of a returned catalog
- Positioning a returned catalog for value
A diligence workstream, not a separate practice.
For catalog and media-library transactions with AI exposure, I focus on what actually moves a deal: whether the training-data and voice and likeness rights were ever cleared, where the indemnities sit, and whether the rights you are paying for will transfer cleanly.
Contract analysis tied to royalty operations. I’ve built deal models, corrected registrations, recovered underpayments, and mapped termination exposure across the catalog lifecycle. The contract has to agree with the cash flow.
Copyright termination lets authors and their heirs recover rights they signed away decades ago, under sections 203 and 304 of the Copyright Act. The windows are strict and the notice requirements are technical. I handle the analysis, the timing, and the filing, and help you decide what a recovered right is worth once it returns.
Before law, I spent five years running the business side of theater companies: Princeton Summer Theater, The New Group, and Mark Morris Dance Group. Double-entry books, budgets, touring logistics, nonprofit governance.
Out of law school, straight into the music business. First as business manager at Rob Shore & Associates, handling business management for recording artists and touring acts. Then to mtheory (now Virgin Music Label & Artist Services) as Royalty Director for six years, running royalty operations at the point streaming transformed the back end of the music business.
I built mtheory’s royalty reporting infrastructure from the ground up, first in Excel (until 2014 statements hit the spreadsheet’s million-row limit), then across successive software systems as the industry’s tooling scrambled to catch up. The work covered statement ingestion and reconciliation across PROs, publishers, labels, SoundExchange, the MLC, and international CMOs; hundreds of outbound royalty statements per reporting cycle; catalog valuations and diligence for investor-grade music assets; and audits covering catalogs generating $10M+ in annual revenue.
I serve artists, songwriters, and estates reclaiming their rights, and the family offices, private equity sponsors, and catalog owners on the other side of the table, on the transactions and operations that move catalog cash flow.
- 2021–The Law Office of Theodore Hall PLLC · Attorney
- 2014–2020mtheory / Virgin Music Label & Artist Services · Royalty Director
- 2011–2014Rob Shore & Associates · Business Manager
- 2005–2010The New Group · Mark Morris Dance Group · Business Operations
New matters and inquiries.
Inquiries are welcome from artists and estates reclaiming rights, from owners and investors buying or selling catalogs, and from anyone who wants a music lawyer who knows the royalty back-end. Initial conversations are by appointment and confidential.
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New York, NY 10025 (by appointment)
Initial conversations are by appointment and confidential.