FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music is pleased to announce its partnership with the IU Kelley School of Business in developing a joint Bachelor of Science in Music Business degree program.
The Jacobs School is also pleased to announce the appointment of Michael J. Sammis as professor of practice in music business and director of music business, effective Aug. 1. He will help perfect a state-of-the-art music business curriculum and, following its launch, teach students in the program through the school’s Music Industry Department.
The new degree will uniquely prepare students to enter a wide range of occupations across the music industry, including areas such as talent representation, venue management and promotion, concert management and more.
Graduates of the program will leverage credentials from Indiana University’s internationally recognized music and business schools to work with companies and businesses across the globe that are shaping the future of the music industry through expanding avenues of technology and commerce.
Sammis has enjoyed a 40-plus-year career focused almost exclusively on music and entertainment. He was most recently president of Universal Production Music, from 2017 to 2021, where he transformed the business by, among other things, integrating several competing brands in the U.S., Germany, France and the United Kingdom to create an industry-leading global flagship brand, thereby empowering one of the largest and most successful production music companies in the industry.
“We could not be happier to be able to develop this innovative program with our colleagues at Kelley, one of the highest ranked business schools in the country,” said Abra Bush, David Henry Jacobs Bicentennial Dean. “Jacobs School of Music graduates can be found in every corner of the global music industry, and by uniting two of IU’s greatest strengths, we are able to provide a top-notch program offering the business skills necessary to be successful in today’s environment.
“We also need a top-notch director to helm such a program and are thrilled that Mike Sammis, with his stunningly impressive decades of music industry credentials, will join us. Our students will benefit endlessly from his vast wealth of real-world experience and knowledge.”
Sammis started his professional journey in public accounting and spent almost 10 years with Ernst & Young in New York City, where he was a key member of their music and entertainment practice. There, he specialized in royalty and financial audits, mergers and acquisitions, and artist litigation support and worked with artists such as Billy Joel, Paul Simon and the Estate of John Lennon as well as corporate clients such as Atlantic Records, EMI Music Publishing and Warner Communications, among many 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 moved into the music publishing arena and, in 1996, began a 25-plus-year career 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, at one point, the largest music publisher in the world.
This pinnacle was reached through a combination of organic growth and Sammis’ 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).
“The Music Industry Department is proud to begin this collaboration with Kelley to serve a new group of students interested in the business of music,” said Michael Stucker, department chair. “To provide music business instruction at the highest level, we need knowledge from the top of the music industry, and Mike Sammis provides that. His professional experience in the upper echelons of the industry will provide our music business students with an experience unmatched anywhere else. We are so honored to have Mike join our department.”