Lucian Grainge Tops Billboard's Power 100 List

For the second consecutive year Billboard has named Lucian Grainge, Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group, the industry’s #1 power broker, leading the brand’s annual Power 100 list of music’s most powerful executives.

Music News Now reports this year's Power 100 details how Grainge's Universal Music Group dominates the market, with UMG artists sweeping the 58th GRAMMY Awards category for Album of the Year, and the label accounting for seven of the top 10 best-selling albums of 2015.

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Billboard announced its highly anticipated Power 100 rankings Sunday in Beverly Hills, at an event that recognized 39 first-time honorees representing heavyweights from record companies, music publishers, managers, talent agencies, and digital consumer brands.

The influential Power 100 has long been considered the definitive list by which industry executives view their annual achievements, evolving legacies, and their standing in the ever-shifting music business. Its selection determines who’s ruling the business of management, publishing, and representation. Among those influencers recognized: 31 labels, 16 management companies, and seven publishers.

“Lucian on the most basic level consistently lives and breathes his mantra: ‘break new artists,’” said Janice Min, co-president and chief creative officer of The Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Media Group. “But more than that, he is as forward-thinking as any executive out there, looking not to preserve broken business models but lead the transformation of a once old-fashioned record business into a huge cutting-edge entertainment business, with the rights of artists and the value of content made a priority.”

As for radio repesentation, iHeartMedia CEO Robert Pittmans places #11 on the list. Last year he ranked #8. The only other radio execs in the Top30 are iHM's Tom Poleman and John Sykes. They tie at #28.