Education
- M.B.A., Business Administration, UCLA Anderson School, 2002
- C.P.A., Licensed in New York State, 1983
- B.B.A., Accounting/Finance, Adelphi University, 1981
Michael J. Sammis is Patrick and Nussara Decker Music Business Chair, professor of practice in music business and director of music business at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. An aspiring musician from a very young age, he has enjoyed a 40-plus-year professional career focused almost exclusively on music and entertainment.
Sammis started his professional journey in public accounting and spent approximately 10 years with Ernst & Young in New York City, where he was a key member of their music and entertainment group. There, he specialized in royalty and financial audits, mergers and acquisitions, and artist litigation support and worked with such clients as Atlantic Records, Elektra Records, Chrysalis Records, EMI Music, Warner Communications, SBK Entertainment World, MPL Communications, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, and the Estate of John Lennon, among others.
In 1992, Sammis relocated to Los Angeles, where he first worked for boutique music company RZO, specializing in business management and tour support. He then began a 25-plus-year career, in 1996, at the Universal Music Publishing Group, where he served as global chief financial officer and executive vice president of operations and helped Universal grow to be the largest music publisher in the world at one point.
This was accomplished through a combination of organic growth and his leadership of the company through some of the largest mergers and acquisitions transactions in the publishing industry, including the acquisitions of PolyGram Music (1998), Rondor Music (2000), Interscope Music (2001), and BMG Music Publishing (2007).
In 2017, Sammis was appointed president of Universal’s production music division. He proceeded to transform the business by integrating several competing brands in the U.S., Germany, France, and the United Kingdom to create the industry-leading global flagship brand Universal Production Music, one of the largest and most successful production music companies in the industry.
Sammis graduated from Adelphi University in 1981 with a B.B.A. in Accounting/Finance and was recently appointed to its board of trustees. He became licensed as a Certified Public Accountant in 1984 and earned an M.B.A. from the UCLA Anderson School in 2002. He and his wife, Susan, have two grown sons (one of whom is a musician) and two grandchildren.