Stein was born in Brooklyn, New York. As a high school student, he interned in the summers of 1957 and 1958 at King Records in Cincinnati. He took on a clerk position for Billboard magazine in 1958 and starting in 1961 worked for two years for King Records. . \n', '

In 1966, Stein and record producer Richard Gottehrer founded Sire Productions, which led to the formation of Sire Records, the label under which he signed pioneer artists such as the Ramones and Talking Heads in 1975, the Pretenders in 1980 and Madonna in 1982. Other acts signed by Sire include The Replacements, Depeche Mode, The Smiths, The Cure, Ice-T, The Undertones and Echo & the Bunnymen. Stein did not fire Depeche Mode despite poor sales of their first three albums in the US; it was their fourth album that brought them American success.\n', '

Such was Stein\'s influence in signing and promoting the new wave genre of music that he is sometimes credited with coming up with the name as an alternative to the term punk, which he found derogative. The term had previously been used to refer to the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s.\n', '

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