Patrick Zelnik

About Patrick Zelnik

French cultural entrepreneur, Patrick Zelnik holds a degree in economics, and is a former student of Sciences Po and the University of Dauphine. He began his career in the music industry at Polydor (1973-1980), where he became the Director of International Marketing. He met Richard Branson in 1977, who three years later offered him the opportunity to create the first European subsidiary of the Virgin Records group: Virgin France.

In 1988, he became President of Virgin stores, the distribution subsidiary of the Virgin group. In 1997, he founded his own publishing, production, and distribution company for cultural goods, Naïve. Multicultural and multimedia, Naïve diversified by creating Naïve books in 2004, Naïve vision in 2005 (production and publishing of DVDs), and naive.fr.

At the same time, Patrick Zelnik has held and continues to hold responsibilities in professional organizations, such as President of the SNEP (National Union of Phonographic Publishing) from 1990 to 1992 and from 1994 to 1997, and of the UPFI (Union of Independent French Phonographic Producers) from 2000 to 2004. He is a co-founder of Impala (European Union of Independent Phonographic Companies), of which he was co-president from 2006 to 2012.

Since 2008, Patrick Zelnik has been President of the Gaîté Lyrique, which opened its doors in March 2011. On September 3, 2009, Nicolas Sarkozy, President of the Republic, and Frédéric Mitterrand, Minister of Culture and Communication, entrusted Patrick Zelnik, accompanied by Jacques Toubon and Guillaume Cerutti, with the presidency of a mission on the legal offer of cultural content on the Internet, on the remuneration of creators, and the financing of cultural industries.