Christian L. Castle

Chris Castle is an Austin-based music lawyer and founder of Christian L. Castle, Attorneys, a practice focused on transactions at the intersection of the traditional music industry, content-based technology, and public policy. He founded the firm in Los Angeles in 2005 and relocated it to Austin in 2011. He is admitted in California and Texas and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.  He is a Fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation.

Chris joined the adjunct faculty of the University of Texas School of Law in Spring 2026 and teaches Music Law Contracts and AI.

His policy work includes representing songwriter clients filing comments in the Copyright Royalty Board’s Phonorecords IV (Subpart B) proceeding.  He authors amicus briefs on copyright and technology issues, including representing the Artist Rights Institute and a group of heirs supporting songwriter Cyril Vetter before the 5th Circuit in Vetter v. Resnik and co-authoring an amicus brief supporting Oracle before the U.S. Supreme Court in Google v. Oracle.  He was commissioned by the World Intellectual Property Organization to co-author a filing on streaming remuneration presented at the 41st Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights.  Chris has authored several public policy papers on artificial intelligence filed in the US, UK, and most recently India.  He has testified on speculative ticketing and artist-rights issues before various government bodies and lectures at law and business schools in the U.S. and Canada. 

Before founding the firm, he served as SVP/General Counsel at SNOCAP in San Francisco, practiced at Wilson Sonsini in Palo Alto and Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp in Los Angeles, and held senior business affairs roles at Sony Music and A&M Records. Chris holds a JD from UCLA School of Law, an MBA from UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management, and graduated with high honors from UCLA, majoring in political theory.

Chris is a director of the Artist Rights Institute, which he founded in 2023 with David Lowery and Nikki Rowling. The Institute hosts the Artist Rights Symposium and Artist Rights Roundtables in collaboration with universities—most recently at American University in Washington, DC, and the University of Georgia in Athens—as well as a financial education program for artists at artistrightsinstitute.org