Martin
Bandier

It is no overstatement to say that Martin Bandier is one of the most formidable music publishers in history. He’s chief executive of the world’s largest music publisher: Sony/ATV, which has been the No. 1 publisher in the U.S. for five straight years.

Sony/ATV counts The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye, Taylor Swift, Queen, Lady Gaga, Kanye West among the thousands of songwriters in its repertoire. Over the course of a career that reaches back to the 1970s and includes stints at the top of SBK and EMI Music Publishing, Bandier has helmed some of the biggest music-industry deals of the past two decades.

Those include EMI’s purchase of the Motown catalog, spearheading the consortium that brought EMI Music Publishing to Sony/ATV for some $2.2 billion in 2012, and just last year, leading the Sony Corporation’s $750 million acquisition of the half of Sony/ATV that was owned by Michael Jackson’s estate.

In recent weeks Bandier extended the company’s deal with Michael Jackson’s estate to administer his Mijac Music catalog — which includes his own work as well as the Sly and the Family Stone and Gamble and Huff catalogs — and sources tell Variety that he may be leading another world-beating deal by acquiring from investors the 60% of EMI publishing that Sony does not already own.

The Queens, New York native is a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and was honored by The Recording Academy in 2015 with its Salute to Industry Icons event on Grammy weekend. He is the founder of the Bandier Program, the highly respected music-business program at his alma mater, Syracuse University, which last year Billboard named one of the “12 Elite Music Business Schools Shaping the Industry.”