Shain Shapiro is a globally recognised thought leader at the convergence of music, culture and urban policy. This is showcased in his debut book, This Must Be The Place: How Music Can Make Your City Better, released on Repeater Books.

This Must Be The Place has been through three pressings, has seen Shain embark on a 70+ date global tour and has been released into Spanish (Liburuak), Italian (EDT) and Arabic (Tashkeel), the Audiobook (Tantor Media) and Japanese (Blkswn Tokyo), with Portuguese later in 2025 (Lusitanian Publishing). It is a seminal book on music and urban policy.

Shain has defined a new way to think about the value of music and the creative economy in cities and places and through it, influenced over 150 cities and places to invest in music and culture as founder and chairman of Sound Diplomacy and Music Cities Events and founder and executive director of the not-for-profit global Center for Music Ecosystems. 

He has authored authoritative reports on the role of music and culture in cities, tourism, the night time economy, real estate, and recovery, including the most extensive guide to music and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ever written, in partnership with the United Nations. He has spoken at hundreds of global conventions, such as SXSW, with the OECD and the UN World Urban Forum, and delivered the first-ever TEDx talk on music’s role in cities. He also received Folk Alliance International’s Spirit of Folk Award in 2022 and SPIN Magazine's Top 25 Music Industry Executives in 2025.

Shain is also the founder of the Music Economy Development Initiative, a landmark project to use music to fight global poverty, in partnership with Global Citizen, the IFC and Universal Music Group and speaks at conferences and events all over the world on music's role in helping to address and solve big global problems.  

Shain holds a PhD from the University of London. He is also an accomplished academic, having authored courses for the Global Leaders Institute and Berklee College of Music and is also the co-founder of Unison Rights, a copyright management entity in Spain.

He is writing his second book, developing a podcast and continuing to lead the Center for Music Ecosystems and support Sound Diplomacy.