use both this parameter and , birth_date to display the person's date of birth, date of death, and age at death) --> , death_place = , death_cause = , body_discovered = , resting_place = , resting_place_coordinates = , burial_place = , burial_coordinates = , monuments = , nationality = , other_names = , siglum = , citizenship = , education = , alma_mater =

Texas A&M Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, TA&M, or TAMU) is a public university, public, Land-grant university, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas, United States. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of ...

, occupation =

Music executive A music executive or record executive is a person within a music company, in particular, a record label who works in senior management and makes executive decisions over the label's artists. Their role varies greatly but in essence, they can over ...

, years_active = , era = , employer = , organization = , agent = , known_for = , notable_works = , style = , height = , television = , title = , term = , predecessor = , successor = , party = , otherparty = , movement = , opponents = , boards = , criminal_charges = , criminal_penalty = , criminal_status = , spouse = , partner = , children = , parents = , mother = , father = , relatives = , family = , callsign = , awards = , website = , module = , module2 = , module3 = , module4 = , module5 = , module6 = , signature = , signature_type = , signature_size = , signature_alt = , footnotes = Alex Luke is a

music executive A music executive or record executive is a person within a music company, in particular, a record label who works in senior management and makes executive decisions over the label's artists. Their role varies greatly but in essence, they can over ...

and former

disc jockey A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include Radio personality, radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at nightclubs or music fes ...

known for his contributions to the

digital music Digital audio is a representation of sound recorded in, or converted into, digital form. In digital audio, the sound wave of the audio signal is typically encoded as numerical samples in a continuous sequence. For example, in CD audio, samp ...

business in the early 2000s. He has held executive positions with

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

and

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

Early life and education

Luke was born in

South Carolina South Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders North Carolina to the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, and Georgia (U.S. state), Georg ...

but later moved to

Dallas, Texas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...

where he graduated from

Berkner High School Lloyd V. Berkner High School is a high school in Richardson, Texas, Richardson, in the U.S. state of Texas, with a 2008 enrollment of 2,755 and a student/teacher ratio of 16.7. It is one of four high schools in the Richardson Independent School ...

. He attended

and while in school became an intern for

George Gimarc George Douglas Gimarc ( ; born 1957) is an American disc jockey, record and radio program producer and author based in Texas and is in the Texas Radio Hall of Fame. He is known for his knowledge about the classic rock radio format, recorded music ...

on the radio show ''The Rock and Roll Alternative''.

Career

Luke worked as an assistant at KNON-FM beginning in 1986 and in 1989 became a full-time DJ for KDGE 94.5 FM in

. During his time at KDGE, he launched and was the original host of ''Edgeclub 94'' and ''The Adventure Club'', a radio show that played newly released music and was credited for bringing exposure to local bands such as

Toadies Toadies are an American rock band formed in 1989 in Fort Worth, Texas, best known for the song " Possum Kingdom". The band's classic lineup consisted of Vaden Todd Lewis (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Lisa Umbarger (bass guitar), Darrel Herbert ...

, Course of Empire, and Funland. He left KDGE in 1994 to become a morning drive DJ and the Assistant Program Director at

KPNT KPNT (105.7 FM broadcasting, FM, "105-7 The Point") is a commercial radio station city of license, licensed to Collinsville, Illinois, and broadcasting to Greater St. Louis. It mainly airs a modern rock radio format, with some elements of active ...

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Miss ...

. During his time at the station, he produced the

Pointfest Pointfest is a large outdoor rock music festival held annually by radio station KPNT in St. Louis, Missouri, at the Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre (formerly known as Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, UMB Bank Pavilion, and Riverport Amphitheater) ...

concert series and introduced the Pointessential CD series. Luke left KPNT in 1997 to become the program director at

Q101 Q101 may refer to: * Archive Series No. 2: Live in Chicago Q101, a live broadcast 'studio' album released by Violent Femmes in 2006 * CKMQ-FM, Merritt, British Columbia, Canada * KQDJ-FM, Valley City, North Dakota * WKQX (FM), an alternative roc ...

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

. Luke went on to work as the VP of Music Programming at

PressPlay PressPlay (stylised press''play'' not be confused witPressplay.app a streaming guide for movies and tv-shows was the name of an online music store that operated from December 2001 until March 2003. It was created as a joint venture between Univer ...

in 2001, an online music service launched by

Universal Music Group Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as Universal Music Group or Universal Music) is a Netherlands, Dutch–United States, American multinational Music industry, music corporation under Law of the Netherlands, ...

and

Sony Music Sony Music Entertainment (SME), commonly known as Sony Music, is an American multinational music company owned by Japanese conglomerate Sony Group Corporation. It is the recording division of Sony Music Group, with the other half being the ...

that would later become

Napster Napster was an American proprietary peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing application primarily associated with digital audio file distribution. Founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, the platform originally launched on June 1, 1999. Audio shared ...

. In 2003 he began working for

where he was in charge of music programming and label relations globally for

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

and where he is credited with launching programs such as the ''iTunes Single of the Week'', ''iTunes Essentials'', and ''

iTunes Originals ''iTunes Originals'' is a series of digital releases that were only made available through Apple's iTunes Store. It was developed by iTunes executive Alex Luke who also developed Apple's "Live From" and "Single of the Week" programs. Each release ...

''. He left Apple in 2011 to become Executive Vice President of A&R for

EMI EMI Group Limited (formerly EMI Group plc until 2007; originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At t ...

. Luke became a venture capitalist and worked at The Valley Fund until leaving in 2017. He then joined

as the Global Head of Programming and Content Strategy for

Amazon Music Amazon Music (previously Amazon MP3) is a music streaming platform and digital music store operated by Amazon. As of January 2020, the service had 55 million subscribers. It was the first music store to sell music without digital rights manag ...

. He subsequently became the Senior VP of Digital Content for both

SiriusXM Sirius XM Holdings Inc. is an American broadcasting corporation headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, that provides satellite radio and online radio services operating in the United States. The company was formed by the 2008 merge ...

and

Pandora In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first human woman created by Hephaestus on the instructions of Zeus. As Hesiod related it, each god cooperated by giving her unique gifts. Her other name—inscribed against her figure on a white-ground '' ky ...

References

External links

LinkedIn
American record producers Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Texas A&M University alumni {{US-music-bio-stub