Suno has announced that Paul Sinclair, former general manager and executive vp at Atlantic Records, is joining the AI music company as its first chief music officer. In this newly created role, the New York-based executive, who has been advising Suno for months now, will guide how the company’s tools are developed to support music creators at all skill levels and to “unlock new experiences between artists and fans,” as stated in a company press release.
Sinclair brings over two decades of music industry experience to his new role at Suno. First, he worked at Warner Music Group as director of digital properties, beginning in 2001, according to LinkedIn. With a longtime interest in spearheading innovation and technology in the music business, Sinclair then joined WMG’s Atlantic Records in 2006 as vp, business development and emerging technologies and stayed at the company until 2024.
While working as Atlantic’s general manager and evp, Sinclair oversaw overall label operations and provided leadership in areas like marketing, digital, artist development, creative, sales/streaming and more. He left Atlantic late last year as part of the company’s major restructuring, which also saw other top Atlantic execs like CEO Julie Greenwald, head of marketing Grace James, senior vp or touring Harlan Frey, evp of press and media strategy Sheila Richman and many more exiting at the same time. Now, Atlantic is helmed by CEO Elliot Grainge and the GM role is held by Tony Talamo, who previously worked with Grainge at his label 10K Projects.
News of Sinclair’s hire follows a busy last few months for Suno. In recent weeks, the company has announced a bevy of new features, designed to give users more control to edit the AI-generated music that Suno produces and hopefully court more seasoned musicians to use the platform. As part of that roll out of new fetures, the AI music company also noted its acquisition of WavTool, a browser-based digital audio workstation (DAW).
Meanwhile, the major music companies — including Sinclair’s former employer WMG — are still pursuing blockbuster lawsuits against Suno and its competitor Udio, alleging that the companies have infringed on their copyrighted sound recordings on “an almost unimaginable scale” by using them to train models without a license. In early June, however, it was reported that the majors are in licensing talks with Suno and Udio to see if private licensing agreements can be reached. It’s unclear how far along those discussions are.
Sinclair is the latest music industry veteran to be recruited by Suno. Last year, multi-platinum hitmaker Timbaland joined Suno as a strategic advisor in October 2024 to help with “day-to-day product development” and “creative direction.”