Billboard count down 'Top 100 Influential People in Music'

Billboard have revealed their annual list of the ‘Power 100′, aka the top most-influential figure in the music industry.

Among the list this year are those who brokered the Universal-EMI merger, especially #1 spotter and UMG chairman Lucian Grainge, as well as upcomers like Len Blavatnik of Deezer, along with the ever-presents like Live Nation’s Michael Rapino.

Billboard editor Bill Werde said of the list:

“Power can be the ability to influence people with or without resistance. To cause or prevent an action. To act or to not act. In physics, power is the work/time ratio. But the most applicable definition of power that I found for this music industry at this moment—and the one that made me recall my first proper meeting with this year’s No. 1 power broker, Lucian Grainge—was from Henry Kissinger.”

The top ten reads as follows:

1. Lucian Grainge (Chairman of Universal Music Group)
2. Coran Capshaw (Red Light Management – R. Kelly, Tiesto, Lollapalooza)
3. Martin Bandier (CEO of Sony)
4. Michael Rapino (CEO of Live Nation)
5. Doug Morris (Chairman of Sony)
6. Len Blavatnik (Warner/Deezer)
7. Rob Light (Creative Artists Agency Managing partner)
8. Tim Leiweke (CEO of Anschutz Entertainment Group – O2 Arena, Coachella…etc)
9. Marc Geiger (Head of Music at WME)
10. Jimmy Iovine (Chairman of Interscope/Geffen)