Martin Bandier

Bandier stepped down from the Chairman/CEO of the company in March 2019 and was succeeded by Jon Platt.

In 2017, he received a Lifetime Service Award from the National Publishers' Association. In May 2019, he was named BMI Icon at BMI's 67th Annual Pop Awards.

In 2006 Bandier established The Bandier Program in Recording and Entertainment Industries at Syracuse University. The program, initially housed at the College of Visual and Performing Arts was later moved to the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in 2017. Billboard has consistently ranked the Bandier program amongst the top music business programs in the nation.

Bandier studied at Stuyvesant High School, Syracuse University, and Brooklyn Law School. He practiced with Battle, Fowler, Jaffin and Kheel, and then became General Counsel to the LeFrak Organization. In 1991, he became chairman and CEO of EMI Music Publishing Worldwide. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2007 he became chairman and CEO of Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

In 1991, EMI Music Publishing Worldwide, then the world's largest music publisher, named Bandier – until then its vice chairman – chairman and chief executive. He was also president and chief operating officer of the SBK Records Group, a record label that EMI operated with its parent. In 2005, Bandier asked EMI to sell him its publishing unit, and when it refused he resigned in 2006. In 2006, Bandier founded a music and entertainment industry degree program at Syracuse University, and named The Bandier Program for Music and Entertainment Industries. A few months later he took over as head of the music publishing entity Sony/ATV. In 2009, he was chief executive of Sony/ATV. In 2007, Bandier assumed the position of chairman and CEO of Sony/ATV Music Publishing responsible for overseeing its global music publishing activities, including talent and copyright acquisitions, day-to-day operations, and the development and implementation of the company's long-term strategic initiatives. In 2012, Sony/ATV Music Publishing consortium acquired EMI Music Publishing, reunited Bandier with his former company catalog he helped build.

In 1990, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 1994, he won the Arents Award. In February 2015 he received the President's Merit Award as a Grammy Icon at the Clive Davis Pre Grammy Gala in Los Angeles. He was the first music publisher to receive the award.

In the early 1980s Bandier and Denise LeFrak divorced, and in 1984 Bandier and Koppelman dissolved their partnership with LeFrak and formed the Entertainment Music Company and the Entertainment Television Company. In 1986, the partners purchased the Combine Music Catalog. That same year, Bandier and Koppelman teamed with financier Stephen Swid to form SBK Entertainment World, Inc. and purchased the 250,000 title CBS songs catalog for the then-record price of $125 million. In 1989, Bandier helped engineer the sale of SBK's song catalog to EMI Music and the creation of SBK Records. By the end of the first year at EMI, the company was named Billboard Magazine's number one music publisher.

Following graduation from Brooklyn Law School, he joined the New York firm of Battle, Fowler, Jaffin and Kheel. In 1969, Bandier became General Counsel to the LeFrak Organization, where he rose to Senior Vice President. In 1975, he formed The Entertainment Company with Sam LeFrak and Charles Koppelman as his co-principals.

Martin N. "Marty" Bandier (born July 21, 1941) is an American music industry executive who was the CEO/Chairman of Sony/ATV Music Publishing for 11 years.

Bandier was born July 21, 1941, and grew up in Queens. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School at 16. At Syracuse University he met his first wife – Denise LeFrak, daughter of housing developer Samuel LeFrak – and majored in political science and history and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1961. He then attended Brooklyn Law School, graduating in 1965.