Partner, Membrain LLC
Twenty five+ years as a record executive, artist manager and brand marketer, cultivating an expertise in domestic and global marketing of artists including The Beatles, Billy Joel, Miles Davis, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, The Rolling Stones, Garth Brooks, and Frank Sinatra, through both traditional and innovative, groundbreaking, non-traditional initiatives, including the recent Spice Girls/Victoria’s Secret strategic partnership.
Sandhaus is currently a Managing Partner in Membrain, a boutique branding and strategic marketing company, which activates music for brands by providing consulting services that focus on optimizing marketing and business development. Membrain collaborates with established and start-up companies to develop new products that are enhanced by their association with music, identifying and structuring collaborations with best of breed partners creating A+ solutions. Current clients include McDonald’s and Hasbro.
He was manager for David Bowie, overseeing all of his creative and marketing affairs in music, film and theatre, worldwide, including The Glass Spider Tour and the Rykodisc catalog reissues. Sandhaus owned and operated an artist management consultant (clients included Elvis Costello), film production and soundtrack company. He served as Executive Producer of “M. Butterfly”, the feature film version of the Tony Award-winning Broadway play, produced by The Geffen Company/Warner Bros. Pictures; and Executive VP, Tribeca Music, Robert De Niro’s soundtrack label distributed by Sony Music, whose feature films soundtracks included, “A Bronx Tale” and “Amongst Friends” both of which he executive produced.
Prior record label management positions include Head of Strategic Marketing and Product Development for the $250 million dollar a year EMI-Capitol Group Entertainment Properties Division, overseeing projects such as The Beatles Anthology, and Executive Producer – The Beatles’ “The Making of Sgt. Pepper” educational initiative, including a televised program distributed by Channel One’s Classroom Channel to over 8 million students in 12,000 middle and high schools across the U.S. He executive produced both “The Band – Across the Great Divide” and “The Beach Boys Pet Sounds” Box Sets. Oversaw the release of the first Starbuck’s cd release, ever, Blue Note Blend.
He has held senior marketing and artist development positions at both Columbia Records and Capitol Records. From 1994-’97, Sandhaus was a member of the Capitol Records New Technologies Committee, which oversaw the development of all CD+, CD-ROM and Internet activities. In 1999, consulted for Atomic Pop, a music and lifestyle Internet site, on the integration of on-line and off-line marketing, sales and distribution of music product including Public Enemy and Ice-T.
Sandhaus was General Manager of independent record label Beyond Music overseeing the platinum selling Lucy Pearl release and the Motley Crue Catalog reissues, amongst others. Senior Executive, General Manager, overseeing the launch of Beyondmusic.com, a 24/7 internet broadband entertainment network that epitomized cross-channel marketing and distribution initiatives to serve worldwide consumer demand for music, entertainment and talent-branded products, powered by HP, in 2000.
He worked with Moir/Borman Entertainment as senior consultant on the worldwide album management of The Rolling Stones – Forty Licks CD release initiating strategic partnerships with the FOX Broadcasting Company, The Simpsons, and MTV Latin. He executive produced AudioSlave Live in Havana, Cuba, May 2005. He is producing an Eartha Kitt biopic and a feature film, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, based on the life stories of anti-Vietnam War activists, brothers and priests, Dan and Phil Berrigan. He is also currently Executive Producer of an animated musical film version of L. Frank Baum’s (The Wizard of Oz), A Patchwork Girl, with music by Mick Jones (The Clash) and lyrics by Robert Hunter (The Grateful Dead).
Sandhaus is Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Tim Robbins’ theatre company, The Actors’ Gang, in Los Angeles and is on the Entertainment Committee of the Violence Policy Center, acknowledged as the “most effective” gun control group in America. Sandhaus also serves on the Board of Give US Your Poor, http://www.giveusyourpoor.org/, an initiative based at the University of Massachusetts whose mission is to create a revolution in public awareness, dispel myths and inspire action towards ending epidemic homeless in the United States. He is one of the Producers of the GUYP cd release, 17 New recordings to Help End Homelessness, featuring Pete Seger, Bruce Springsteen, Danny Glover, Jewel, Bonnie Raitt. He is on the Board of Advisors of Grid Republic, www.gridrepublic.org/ a non-profit organization that provides a safe and accessible way of advancing “distributed computing. The desired result is to create a massive supercomputer that can work on public research projects, the key to unlocking the cures and tools for solving humanity’s problems.
Sandhaus has a BS from Cornell University and serves on the Entrepreneurship Advisory Board for the Cornell Hotel School.