Panos Panay (music executive)

Panos Andreas Panay (born Panayiotis Andreas Panayiotou June 25, 1972) is a Cyprus-born entrepreneur, executive and author.

Panay currently holds the post of President of the Recording Academy alongside CEO Harvey Mason Jr. Previously he was the Senior Vice President of Global Strategy & Innovation at Berklee College of Music.

He founded Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship, and founded the online platform Sonicbids, which was later acquired by Backstage Magazine.

Panay is a Fellow at MIT Connection Science at the MIT Media Lab, and also founded the Open Music Initiative.

Panay has studied for an Executive MBA from IE Business School/Brown University and holds a Music Business & Management degree from Berklee College of Music, where he studied guitar with Lauren Passarelli.

Panay began his career as a talent agent at Ted Kurland Associates responsible for the international tours of artists including Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Sonny Rollins, and Nina Simone.

In 2000, Panay started the company Sonicbids to enable independent artists to connect with music promoters online, using Electronic Press Kits (EPK) as a means of booking bands.

Panay founded the company in his apartment in Newton, MA. The company later acquired ArtistData.

Panay led the company as CEO for 13 years, until after its acquisition by Backstage LLC, in a deal backed by Guggenheim Partners.

In 2013, after the sale of Sonicbids, Panay returned to his alma mater Berklee College of Music, to found the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (BerkleeICE).

Among the institute's many activities are joint classes with MIT and the design firm IDEO, a summer high school program in collaboration with Brown University, sponsored internships, research projects including Rethink Music's Fair Music Report, online courses and other engagements meant to get students ready for careers.

In June 2016, Panay co-founded the non-profit Open Music Initiative, in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab, and individuals including inventor Dan Harple and IDEO partner Michael Hendrix.

The mission of Open Music Initiative was to promote and advance the creation of open-source standards and innovation related to music to help assure proper compensation for all creators, performers, and rights holders of music.

As Senior Vice President, Global Strategy & Innovation at Berklee College of Music.

Panay lead Berklee's global strategy to create an interconnected ecosystem of campuses, centers, and partnerships across the world that foster and inspire new artistic expressions, idioms, and ideas through leading pedagogy, the development of cross-cultural fluency and creative capacity, and seamless integration of technology and online learning.

He oversaw Berklee's campus in Valencia, Spain; BerkleeNYC; Global Initiatives; the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship; the Berklee India Exchange; the Berklee Music and Health Institute; Berklee's institutional strategy; and Berklee's global partnerships.

Those partnerships included Berklee's expansion into China and the K-12 sector.

Panay was awarded the Fast Company's "Fast 50" honor, Mass Hi-Tech All Stars, Boston Business Journal's "40 under 40", Boston Globe's Game Changers of 2017, and BosInno "50 on Fire" Award for excellence in education.

Panay lives with his wife, Kimberly, and twin daughters, Zoe and Lydia in Los Angeles, California.

His first cousin, Panos (Costa) Panay, was Chief Product Officer (CPO) at Microsoft until September 2023, where he led the development of the Microsoft Surface product line and the Windows 11 operating system.

In August 2019, Panay was named an MIT Connection Science Fellow.

In February 2020, Panay opened Berklee Abu Dhabi, a 4000 square meter facility developed in partnership with the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism.

In addition to the campus, the partnership encompasses $5 million in fellowships, through which students from the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region will be given opportunities to attend Berklee College of Music; Boston Conservatory at Berklee; Berklee's campus in Valencia, Spain; Berklee Online; and summer programs, and to have an impact on the life of Berklee internationally.

In June 2021, Panay was announced as Co-President and Chief Revenue Officer of the Recording Academy, alongside Valeisha Butterfield Jones.

In October 2022, Jones rejoined Google as their Vice President of Partnerships & Engagement with Panay taking on the sole Presidency of the Recording Academy.

Panay has been tasked with driving business growth through the identification of new partnerships, strategic global expansion, and leveraging new technologies while also expanding the services offerings for both Academy's members and the music industry.

Panay has written about startups and entrepreneurship for blogs and publications including Huffington Post, Forbes, Entrepreneur, WSJ Accelerators and Fast Company.

He has spoken at a TEDx event.

He also spoke in the podcast Shaping Business Minds Through Art.

In 2021, Panay and R. Michael Hendrix, global design director at IDEO, co-wrote and published Two Beats Ahead (PublicAffairs, US and Penguin Business, UK), a book that covers what the musical mind has to teach about innovation, featuring interviews with top creatives including Pharrell Williams, Justin Timberlake, Gloria Estefan, Imogen Heap, Radiohead, T Bone Burnett, Hank Shocklee (co-founder of Public Enemy), and Jimmy Iovine.

The book was selected by The Financial Times as Business Book of the Month in April 2021, featured in Harvard Business Review's IdeaCast, Talks at Google, Rebel Radio, and BBC Weekend.

Panay has guest-written articles on entrepreneurship for Forbes, BusinessWeek, Fast Company, and Inc. Magazine.