Shain Shapiro is the world’s leading authority on music as an instrument for change, from healthcare and climate to economic development and cities. His argument, developed over two decades of work in more than 150 cities and places, is that music is infrastructure, and treating it that way changes what societies can do.

His second book, How Music Can Save the World makes the case that music belongs inside the systems we use to solve our biggest problems — development finance, healthcare, climate policy, crisis recovery and education — and shows what happens in the places already proving it. This book is supported by a podcast of the same name, produced by acclaimed music media company DrownedinSound. 

His first book, This Must Be The Place: How Music Can Make Your City Better (Repeater, 2023), became the defining text of the music cities movement: thousands sold, editions in Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Japanese and Portuguese, plus an audiobook, and a 90+ date global tour.

Shain is the founder and executive director of the Center for Music Ecosystems (CME), the global nonprofit conducting research to better use music to address and solve big problems, and founder and chairman of Sound Diplomacy, the leading global music, culture and creative economy consultancy that has delivered over 190 projects in 40 countries. Sound Diplomacy also produces the globally acclaimed Music Cities Events conferences, including the Music Cities Convention, Sound Development, and the Music Tourism Convention.    

Through CME, Shain is also the founder of the Music Economy Development Initiative (MEDI), a landmark partnership with Global Citizen to establish music as a tool to support economic growth and development — building the case that investing in music economies in the world's youngest, fastest‑growing countries is development policy, not cultural policy. He co‑authored MEDI's flagship report, We Need Tracks Before We Have Trains, with economist Will Page. He is also the co-founder of Unison Rights, a leading copyright management entity in Spain and worldwide. 

Lastly, he also founded the Music Policy Resilience Network, which works with a cohort of 25 small‑ to mid‑sized cities around the world to incorporate music into economic development, the creative economy, and resilience strategies and co‑founded the Music Cities Network, a thriving collaborative of cities and places worldwide.  

He has authored authoritative reports on music's role in cities, tourism, real estate and recovery — including the most extensive guide ever written on music and the UN Sustainable Development Goals — spoken at hundreds of events across 50+ countries including SXSW, Global Citizen NOW, the World Bank and the UN World Urban Forum, and delivered the first TEDx talk on music's role in cities. He is a contributing writer for Forbes and has written for Monocle, The Guardian, Devex, NextCity and others. 

He received Folk Alliance International's Spirit of Folk Award in 2022 and was named one of SPIN's Top 25 Music Industry Executives in 2025. He holds a PhD from the University of London and lives in East London.