Michael Poster is Music Acquisitions and Financing Chair and Managing Partner in Michelman & Robinson LLP’s New York Office, where he specializes in catalog acquisitions, corporate M&A, debt and equity financing transactions, joint ventures, strategic partnerships, and other deals where the music industry and corporate dealmaking converge.

As a transactional attorney with over 25 years’ experience, Michael has successfully structured, negotiated, and closed a broad range of corporate deals with an emphasis on the music industry. Michael’s music catalog experience spans the length of his career, and includes buy-side and sell-side catalog transactions across nearly every deal size, rights type, and genre in the marketplace, and involves clients including major and independent labels, private-equity backed buyers, top industry executives, hit-making songwriters, and key sources of debt and equity financing. He has been named in Billboard’s annual list of Top Music Lawyers each year from 2018 through 2024 and has been included among its listing of top legal dealmakers in music catalog transactions. Michael was also recognized as a “Power Lawyer in Music” by The Hollywood Reporter in 2021, included in Variety’s “Legal Impact Report” in 2023, and recognized by his peers in both “Best Lawyers” and “Super Lawyers.”

Michael has been referred to as “the most evil lawyer in the world,” “one of those ‘New York’ lawyers,” and “the most effective dealmaker in the music industry” (we will leave it to you to figure out which was from a client).

Michael is honored to have served as chairman of the Mondo.NYC annual CLE event, and has previously been chair of other NY-based entertainment and media law programs for more than 10 years. In addition, he has spoken and published articles on copyright, corporate finance, entertainment, and licensing issues and is frequently quoted on music and copyright law issues in Billboard, the Wall Street Journal, Axios, Law360, Forbes, Bloomberg, World IP Review, and other publications.