Seymour Stein (born 1942 in Brooklyn, New York) is an entrepreneur in the music industry who has been a part of the business since getting his first job as a clerk for Billboard magazine in 1958. Stein is a vice president of Warner Bros. Records and a co-founder of Sire Records.

Music career [edit]

In 1966 Stein and record producer Richard Gottehrer founded Sire Productions, which led to the formation of Sire Records, the label under which he signed pioneer artists such as the Ramones and Talking Heads in 1975, the Pretenders in 1980 and Madonna in 1982. Other acts signed by Sire include Depeche Mode, The Smiths, Ice-T, The Undertones and Echo & the Bunnymen.

Such was Stein's influence in signing and promoting the "New Wave" genre of music that he is sometimes credited with coming up with the name as an alternative to the term "punk", which he found derogative. The term had previously been used to refer to the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s.

To date, Stein remains the President of Sire Records and is also Vice President of Warner Bros. Records with which he has had a marketing and distribution deal from 1976 to 1994 and again since April 2003. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 14, 2005, under the lifetime-achievement category.

Seymour Stein was formerly married to the late music promoter and real estate executive Linda Stein; together, the couple had two daughters before they divorced, on amicable terms, in the late 1970s.

Stein has never remarried.

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Legacy [edit]

• Seymour Stein is the subject of an eponymous song by the Scottish musical group Belle and Sebastian.
• He was the winner of a Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Dance Music Awards in 2010.

See also [edit]

• Sire Records
• Sire Records artists
• "New Wave"

External links [edit]

• Biography by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• Interview with Seymour Stein - The Citizen (South Africa), 17 August 2006
• Seymour Stein biography at allmusic.com
• Seymour Stein lyrics (Sung By Belle and Sebastian) - at belleandsebastian.com
• Interview with Seymour Stein by Terry Gross of Fresh Air, 15 October 2009