Sam Hendel
Chord Music Partners, Dundee Partners
Managing Partner
Sam Hendel is the Managing Partner of Chord Music Partners and Dundee Partners. He founded Chord in 2021, which is a joint venture with Universal Music Group and serves as UMG’s global catalogue acquisition vehicle. Today, Chord is one of the largest music rights platforms in the world, with a growing portfolio of over 65,000 works spanning both legacy and contemporary artists, including The Weeknd, Fleetwood Mac, David Guetta, OneRepublic, John Legend, Diplo/Major Lazer, ZZ Top, and Morgan Wallen. The platform combines institutional capital with UMG’s unmatched global infrastructure, giving it unique access to premium deal flow, world-class active management, and long-term alignment with artists and rights holders.
In addition to Chord, Sam and his family have invested in media and cultural enterprises such as Knitting Factory Entertainment, Partisan Records, and Kino Lorber. He is also an active investor and board member at the intersection of media and technology, and is involved in companies including Royalty, Colors Studios, Okayplayer, Fandiem, and the venture fund, 528Hz.
Sam’s career began in investment management, where he specialized in merger arbitrage and event-driven strategies. He is also the co-founder of Dataminr, the world’s leading real-time AI company for event and risk detection.