MEIEA Summit 2025

Official Welcome

David Levin is BMI’s Senior Vice President, Licensing. He is responsible for all of BMI’s domestic licensing and revenue generation, encompassing radio, television, digital media, cable, satellite and general licensing. Levin, who oversees teams in New York and Nashville, reports directly to Mike Steinberg, BMI’s EVP, Chief Revenue & Creative Officer, and is based in New York.
Under Levin’s direction as Vice President, Digital Licensing, BMI’s digital revenues grew from $50 million in 2012 to more than $250 million in 2018. He helped secure the company’s first licensing deals with Netflix, Amazon’s Music and Video Services, Apple Music, Hulu and Facebook, and also established new licensing structures with Spotify, YouTube and Pandora.
Prior to BMI, Levin spent 12 years at Sony Music Entertainment where he held various positions throughout his tenure including Senior Vice President, Digital Sales, and Vice President, New Media. While at Sony, Levin established the digital and mobile business channels which started as a small, nontraditional segment, but soon became much of the company’s core business. Before joining Sony, he ran the marketing department for Getmusic.com, a joint venture between BMG and Universal.
In addition to being a sought-after speaker at conferences such as SXSW, Music Biz, RAIN and MONDO, Levin made Billboard’s Digital Power Players list in 2015 and 2017, 2018 and 2019. He holds an MBA from Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Management and a BA in Sociology, also from Rutgers University.

Kris Ahrend is the Chief Executive Officer of The MLC, where he leads the organization in its mission to ensure songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers receive their mechanical royalties from streaming and download services in the U.S. accurately and on time. Under his direction, The MLC has achieved total royalties distributed of more than $2.7 billion and grown membership to over 50,000 Members to date.
Before joining The MLC, Kris served as the President of U.S. Shared Services for Warner Music Group (WMG), where he led the development and launch of WMG’s Center of Excellence for Shared Services in Nashville and oversaw the operations of fifteen different functional teams providing a variety of administrative, financial, and legal services to WMG’s U.S.-based publishing teams, record labels, and corporate divisions. Prior to launching the Center of Excellence, Ahrend served as the Head of Business & Legal Affairs for WMG’s catalog label, Rhino Records, in Los Angeles, and then led a large legal, financial, and administrative shared services organization within WMG that he helped to create.

Kris started working in the music industry in New York City, where he held positions in the Law Department at Sony Music and then the Business and Legal Affairs Department at Sony BMG Music Entertainment.
A graduate of Binghamton University in New York and the Washington & Lee School of Law, Kris began his legal career as a law clerk in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He then spent several years in private practice, working in the New York office of the international law firm, Simpson Thacher.

The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) is a nonprofit organization designated by the U.S. Copyright Office pursuant to the historic Music Modernization Act of 2018.
In January 2021, The MLC began administering blanket mechanical licenses to eligible streaming and download services (digital service providers or DSPs) in the United States. The MLC collects the royalties due under those licenses from the DSPs and pays songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers. 
The MLC has built a publicly accessible musical works database, as well as a portal that creators and music publishers can use to submit and maintain their musical works data. These tools help ensure that creators and music publishers are paid properly. work to level up any artists’ journey
together.
Before building 24/7 Artists, she co-founded House Studios – an influential recording space in
the DC, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) music scenes that contributed to the success of artists
like Logic, Ari Lennox, Wale, VicBlends, and Mannywellz.

Mitch Glazier is Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In his nearly 20 years at RIAA, Glazier has played a vital role in the music industry’s transition to streaming and “anywhere, anytime” access to music. Before joining RIAA, Glazier served as Chief Counsel for Intellectual Property to the Judiciary Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives under Chairman Henry Hyde. In his career in and out of government, Glazier has worked on every major copyright bill considered in the past three decades from the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 to the Music Modernization Act of 2018, laying the foundation for the modern streaming economy that has strengthened and remade the music business for the 21st Century. A native of Illinois, Glazier served as law clerk to the Honorable Wayne R. Andersen, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois, and practiced law at the Chicago firm Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg as an associate in commercial litigation. He graduated from Northwestern University and Vanderbilt Law School. Named to Billboard’s Power 100 list of top music executives, Glazier serves as Chairman of the Board of RIAA, Chairman of the Board of Musicians on Call, the charity that brings the healing power of music to the bedsides of patients in hospitals and health care facilities around the country, and serves on the Boards of IFPI, SoundExchange, Leadership Music and the Lutheran Church of St. Andrew in Silver Spring, Maryland. As a teenager in the 80s, Glazier’s room posters included Simple Minds and INXS. A fan of Chicago Blues, he was privileged to see Koko Taylor live several times before she passed. He and his wife, Carly, have two sons, ages 21 and 18 – one of them a songwriter, producer and musician himself – who constantly keep their parents in check with new music discoveries. Glazier’s goal: to foster respect for the power of music.