Kent Klavens is Senior Vice-President of Business and Legal Affairs at Universal Music Publishing Group. Until the end of 2007, he was Sr. Vice President and General Counsel of Famous Music, a division of Viacom and affiliate of Paramount Pictures until it was sold to Sony/ATV Music Publishing that year. With Famous for almost 17 years, he was responsible for all major agreements, as well as copyright and other legal issues, including exclusive deals with such worldwide hit songwriters, producers and artists as Shakira, Eminem, Akon, Linda Perry, Bjork, Busta Rhymes, Boyz II Men, POD, Jet, Irv Gotti and Modest Mouse (as well as dozens of Latin and country music songwriters), catalog purchases, subpublishing agreements, audit settlements, litigation supervision, licenses and many legal matters involving Paramount's more than 75-year film and TV music catalog and those of MTV, Nickelodeon, CBS and music library Extreme Music.
A graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Southwestern University School of Law, Kent has had both a book and various articles published about topics pertaining to music publishing and songwriting. In addition to being a member of the State Bar of California, he is also a former board member and officer of the LA Chapter of the Recording Academy (formerly NARAS), a present member and former board member of the California Copyright Conference and a long-time member of the Los Angeles Copyright Society. He was at one time Chairman of the National Academy of Songwriters, which was merged into the Songwriters Guild of America in the 1990s.