Record Executive. Best remembered as the co-founder of Sire Records and Vice President of Warner Bros. Records. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he and his siblings grew up surrounded by music and as a result, he became interested in the music industry. During the summers of 1957-1958, he interned at Syd Nathan's King Records label in Cincinnati, Ohio. He took a job as a clerk for Billboard magazine in 1958, working with editor-in-chief Paul Ackerman. After his tenure with Billboard, he returned to King Records and worked there for two years (1961 to 1963). In 1966, he co-founded Sire Productions with Richard Gottehrer. The name was soon changed to Sire Records. By the early 1970s, Gottehrer left the company, leaving Stein in primary control of the label. He is credited to have coined the term "new wave" to describe the emerging post-punk/synthpop subgenre-music scene of the late 1970s to early 1980s as an alternative to "punk" which he saw as negative or derogatory. In 1977, Warner Bros. Records began distributing Sire Records' albums and purchased the label the next year in 1978. Artists signed to Sire include: Ramones, Madonna, Talking Heads, The Pretenders, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Replacements, Paul Westerberg, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Yazoo (Yaz), Erasure, Lou Reed, The Cure, The Cult, Ice-T, Body Count, The Undertones, Ministry, Modern English, Aztec Camera, k.d. lang, Primal Scream, Barenaked Ladies (BNL), Dinosaur Jr., Uncle Tupelo and Wilco among others. He met Madonna in a hospital room while recuperating from a heart infection in 1982. She auditioned on the spot and he signed her immediately to Sire. Stein is a founding member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and served on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation's Board of Directors. By 1994-1995, he became Vice President of Warner Bros. Records and Sire albums were being distributed by sister label Elektra Records (ran by Sylvia Rhone) before distribution went back to the main label, WB Records in 2003. He is the subject of a 1998 Belle and Sebastian song titled "Seymour Stein." In 2005, Stein was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a Non-Performer via the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018, he published his memoir, Siren Song: My Life in Music and received the Grammy Trustees Award. He was president of Sire Records and vice president of Warner Bros. Records until his retirement in July 2018. He died at his home in Los Angeles, California. He was 80.