Billboard’s 2026 class of top business managers, nominated by their firms and peers and chosen by our editors, takes on tasks for clients that are daunting in their complexity: auditing streaming royalties, negotiating concert tours, building equity through branding deals and selling or buying music catalogs. To say nothing of conventional chores like budgeting, filing taxes and guiding investments.
The challenges involved with another customary task, estate planning, hit the headlines this year following the death of Dolly Parton. In a 2020 Billboard cover story, Parton spoke about the importance of an artist having their affairs in order. “A word to all the other artists out there: If you haven’t made those provisions, do that. You don’t want to leave that mess to your family for people to have to fight over.” But a fight is precisely what began after Parton’s death when her estate sought a restraining order against a relative who, its filing claimed, had been trying to extort money from the estate. “You can plan the inheritance as carefully as Dolly did, but you cannot guarantee everyone’s acceptance of that plan,” says estate attorney Scott Rahn (who was not involved in Parton’s planning). While tasks like estate planning have long been a core service provided by business managers, managing intellectual property has taken on new urgency in the AI age.
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AI tools have been trained by ingesting massive amounts of data, a process that tech companies have claimed is fair use of copyrights or, in legal parlance, “transformative,” not simply duplication of a work.
On Sept. 29, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia rejected that AI training claim.
The ruling affirmed a lower court’s partial summary judgment in favor of information and technology company Thomson Reuters, which said its copyrighted online legal research platform, Westlaw, was used by the AI startup ROSS Intelligence to train a new AI-powered research tool.
A joint brief in support of Thomson Reuters filed by the RIAA and the National Music Publishers’ Association explains the relevance of the case to the music industry. Record companies and music publishers “have sued AI services that train on their sound recordings and musical compositions. Those services have responded by asserting that their conduct is exonerated by the fair use doctrine,” the brief stated. “They are wrong.”
Many firms have focused on AI-related advice. “We have always been advocates for clients betting on themselves and owning their IP, or intellectual property,” says Rit Venerus, senior managing director at Cal Financial Group. “The more you own, the more you can control how your IP is used, which can be very helpful when confronting AI.”
Venerus puts the rise of this new technology in perspective.
“The world continues to move at a faster and faster pace,” he says, “and we see the impact on our clients in real time.”
360 Business Management
Reggie Gooden
Founder/CEO
Abacus Financial Business Management
Belva Anakwenze
Entertainment business manager
Adeptus
David Levin
Managing partner
Ellis Beber
Tyler Kizu
Bruce Kolbrenner
Michael Nelson
Partners
ARC Business Management
Tate Henshaw
Co-founder
Armanino Advisory
Ed Eschleman
Managing director of business management
Olga Goldovskaya
Director of business management and family office services
Bernstein Private Wealth Management
Daniel Weisman
Managing principal of national sports and entertainment group
Business Management LAB
Angie Barajas
Louis Barajas
Co-founders
Business Wealth & Tax Management
John Shaheen
Managing partner
Cal Financial Group
Rit Venerus
Senior managing director
Butch Gage
Dan Goscombe
Managing directors
Sarah Dellimore
Cara Jeffrey
Amy Self
Directors
Venerus
Sarah Cramer Shields
With the rising concerns surrounding AI, climate change, global political conflicts and more, it’s a difficult time for many, including those in the music business.
“The world continues to move at a faster and faster pace, and we see the impact on our clients in real time,” says Rit Venerus, senior managing director at Cal Financial Group, which stands out among business managers as a go-to firm for its broad perspective and top-grossing touring acts.
“Whether it’s geopolitical, economic, AI, weather or fires, we are always working with clients to help them navigate through these challenges.”
The firm — whose artist clients include Jack White, Phoebe Bridgers, John Mayer, Dave Matthews Band, Dead & Company and Soundgarden — has one important piece of advice to share when it comes to the increasing use of AI in the music industry: “We have always been advocates for clients betting on themselves and owning their [intellectual [property],” Venerus explains. “The more you own, the more you can control how your IP is used, which can be very helpful when confronting AI.”
An investment trend that Venerus has noted lately is in collectibles.
“Clients collecting memorabilia has continued to grow. For example, look at the recent auction of David Gilmour’s guitar,” Venerus says of the famed “Black Strat” used by Gilmour on iconic Pink Floyd albums including The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. The instrument sold for a record-breaking $14.55 million at Christie’s in June, becoming the most expensive guitar ever sold. “It’s an area where we expect continued growth, and it’s one where clients can have unique access and insight into the market.”
While the recent past has brought many challenges, Cal Financial has celebrated milestones as well.
“We are thrilled to be heading into our 25th year and still being a privately owned and managed firm,” he says.
And among achievements by his clients, he points to the 60th-anniversary celebration of the Grateful Dead with Dead & Company in 2025 at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
“Grateful Dead 60 at Golden Gate Park was an incredible event to be a part of, with an incredible team around the band,” he says. “It was also very touching that those shows turned out to be Bob Weir’s final performances.” —ANNA CHAN
Camaleon
Jose Luis Aristizábal
Founder/CEO
Capeles
Edgard Capeles
CEO
CC Young
Colin Young
Founder/director
Young
Aimee McGhee
Reviewing the finances of some of the industry’s biggest stars as well as its more promising upstarts has given London-based business manager Colin Young a bird’s-eye view of the music business that few people have. In his estimation, it’s a great time to be a star — and a hard time being an upstart.
“Touring at the arena and stadium level has been very buoyant, but touring at the theater level and below has been very problematic for clients,” says Young, the founder and owner of firm CC Young.
He points to the high costs of being on the road, which he says never fell post-pandemic as some had expected — and combined with back-end taxes, those expenses can push shows in certain countries entirely into the red for the average artist.
“When touring happens in some countries, we pay withholding tax on profits,” he explains. “But in other parts of Europe, like Spain, the tax is punishing and based on gross, not profit.”
While Young declines to name his clients, his practice — which has 135 employees and offices in London, Los Angeles and Stockholm — has become known as a go-to for high-profile artists who want a royalty audit from their label or publisher.
This year, Young says that “the resistance by record and publishing companies is ever more profound. There’s been a conscious decision by the record companies to reduce their internal staff levels, so they simply don’t have the capabilities to service the requests and it just gets pushed back and back.”
With the rise of AI licensing deals, Young says that while artists could stand to make a little bit of money from such agreements, “the ship has sailed” on deciding whether they want to participate.
“That bit is just down to the record companies, and it’s at their discretion,” he claims. (As Billboard reported earlier this year, some record companies are taking the position that they already have the rights needed to include their entire catalogs in AI training once licensing deals are struck, without asking artists.) “Yes, it will generate some revenue,” Young says. There will be some benefit to his clients, “but will it ever get us back to the CD [era]? No.”
Amid all the challenges of his job, Young remains a music fan at heart.
“I look at [Bob] Dylan. I look at [Leonard] Cohen. I look at Nick Cave,” he says. “When I look at what they’ve achieved, when I look at the emotion they express in their music — it means something. Their emotion really means something, and that’s what music is about. It really connects. I have optimism in this game. I’ve never been more optimistic than I am now.” —KRISTIN ROBINSON
Citrin Cooperman
Chris King
Partner/music industry practice leader
Maria del Pilar Lopez
Errol Wander
Partners
Shu Li
Managing director
CohnReznick
Sean Granat
Partner of private client services
Dales Evans (a division of BKL)
Lester Dales
Paul Makin
Partners
David Weise & Associates, a division of NKSFB
David Weise
Founding partner
Jaime Masuda
Rob Salzman
Partners
Dunn Pariser & Peyrot
Mark Pariser
Tony Peyrot
Partners
Empower Business Management
Sally Velazquez
Founder/tax attorney/business manager
Tracy Miller
Vp of operations/business manager
Farris Self & Moore
Kella Farris
Stephanie Self
Catherine Moore
Stephanie Alderman
Partners
Fasbender Financial Management
Tina Fasbender
Founder/president
FBMM
Julie Boos
Owner/chairman/business manager
Duane Clark
Owner/president/business manager
Jamie Cheek
Owner/CEO/business manager
Erica Rosa
Owner/managing director of royalties and contract compliance
David Boyer
Jen Conger
Dan Killian
Carmen Romano
Owners/business managers
Paul Barnabee
Director of West Coast operations/business manager
Fineman West & Co.
Adam Caswell
Director of business management
Heather Gruber
Royalty manager
Roger Ramos
Account manager
Focus Partners Wealth
Amir Malek
Pam Malek
Co-heads of business management
FTS Global Management (a joint venture with ADA Music)
Travis D Wilson
CEO/business manager
Gelfand Rennert & Feldman
Tyson Beem
CEO
Christopher Fazzolari
Shane Glass
Todd Kamelhar
Willie LaRose
Ewen MacNeil
John Menneci
Melissa Morton
Mike Skeet
Bill Tannenbaum
Managing directors
Glocal Management Group
Derick Luna
Managing member
Gold Business Management
Ed Gold
Founder/CEO
Grid Financial Management
Bryan Patrick Franklin
CEO
Joey De Leon
Partner/director
Ground Control Business Management
Kevin Dalton
Steve Eggart
Rob Taylor
Dwight Wiles
Managing directors of music division
David Murray
Business manager
Grupo Silva Global Business Management
Jose Alberto Silva
Managing partner
HHB Company
Becky Harris
CEO
John Huelsman
President
KLBM
Kristin Lee
Managing director
ICONAC
Daniel Berrocal
Founder/CEO
LC Business Management
Lauren Cooper
Founder/CEO
Leftbrain
Nicholas Judd
Founder/CEO
Nicholas Brema
Graham Helser
Business managers
LL Business Management
Marius Bercovici
Justin D. Kobay
Partners
Luma Business Management
Adrien Good
Founder/business manager
Mallori Kirchenschlager
Partner/business manager
MAI Capital Management
Matt Klarberg
Senior client advisor/managing director
Mann Gelon Smith Sroka Lee
Alex Smith
Co-managing partner
Justin Sroka
Partner
Martin Business Management
Josh Martin
President
Melby Wealth Management
Shaun Melby
Founder
MGO
Tony Smalls
Partner/entertainment, sports and media industry group leader
Michael Meschures
Partner
Miller Kaplan
Michael Kaplan
Managing partner
NKSFB
Michael Karlin
Founding partner
Melissa Earnhart
Steve Landau
Matt Segal
Mabel Tash
Partners
O’Neil Hagaman
Kerry O’Neil
Alvin Hagaman Jr.
Legina Chaudoin
Cheryl Harris
Sam Powers
Lynda Ragsdale
Lillian Williams
Partners