The Rhythm Section

Peter Singh was 5 years old when he first picked up the saxophone. He learned how to play from his grandfather, and soon followed in his footsteps to become a multi-instrumentalist. “He would pop on to the trombone or the keys or drums or whatever he wanted,” Singh remembers. “I play a bit of everything.”

Music was “a first love,” Singh says. It wasn’t a reliable career path, though—at least not in the eyes of his family. “The options as a Caribbean kid were generally either doctor or lawyer or engineer,” he says. Singh chose law, found intellectual property as a compromise, and today counts entertainers and other creatives as clients. Along with counsel work at Fourscore Business Law in Raleigh, he recently started his own practice, ProMus Law (a portmanteau of “professional musician” that’s pronounced “promise”), with a focus on entertainment work.

He still makes time for his own musical pursuits, playing as sideman in a few Raleigh-area bands, working with ministries, and operating behind the scenes as a songwriter and producer. “Most of my work is in the R&B and soul and gospel spaces, but I like to bring elements from other genres into that,” he says.

All of which helps him better understand his clients. “The main thing is just knowing the struggle, really. Understanding, for one, budgetary constraints are usually part of the deal,” he says. His versatility helps him see deals from all sides. “I’ve been in the shoes of the artist. I’ve been on the label side. I’ve been on the publisher side.”

Singh’s work focuses on mergers and acquisitions, as well as “whatever comes across my clients’ desk.” That can include venture financing, operating agreements, product development, vendor agreements, tech licensing and more. “It keeps things interesting,” Singh says.

One client founded a data security privacy training company, with Singh helping in all the day-to-day needs. After Singh helped him exit with a $50 million deal, he went on to work with him again as he built a new business and exited it a few years later. “That was really exciting—to go through it the first time with him and then seeing lessons learned from that first deal, how they informed our negotiation for what came next,” he says. “That was a really cool full-circle moment for us.”

He’s also built something of a niche in working with crowdfunded startups, including the biggest round of crowdfunding ever done by a North Carolina company. “I’ve found that crowdfunding is a way to democratize access to private companies. There still are a lot of hoops to jump through and protections for the investor, which I think should stay in place, but it does open the doors for people to write smaller checks and have a groundswell for your business,” he says. “It creates a pretty interesting ecosystem of people that want to see you succeed.”

Singh enjoys the deep dives required with these clients, as well as the marketing involved, finding ways to characterize the funding as an opportunity while knowing the limits on what you can project. “All of that is a very interesting dance,” he says. “My first job is usually to figure out the why of the offering, and then making sure that everybody’s clear on that so there are no broken promises or broken hearts at the end of the day.”

Seeing a need, Singh in 2023 started up the nonprofit Carolina Lawyers for the Arts & Entertainment, part of the national Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts network, to provide access to low-cost or no-cost legal services for creatives. So far, Singh has worked with songwriters, authors, filmmakers, actors and others in the fine arts with issues including contract negotiations, song sampling and more—“Touching on the same touchstones of intellectual property rights or personal rights or different ways to monetize their talents.” The organization is currently a solo act, but he plans to bring other local lawyers on board soon. “This year we’ll kick into gear with actually serving more clients than I can handle on my own,” he says.

Singh has recently become his own client when he acquired and relaunched the shoe company Glyph. He worked with a mentor for the design patent work, and has taken on trademark renewal and other steps on his own. “It is interesting to see what people try to slip past you as a contract before they know that you do this day in, day out,” he says.

Music remains his first love. “It’s inescapable,” he says. His ear fixates on every underlying piece of a song—the drums, the harmonies and the textures in the background. “Most people don’t notice, but I can’t help but hear it,” he says. The layers of the law are similar for him. “The brain works through it the same way.”