David Platz

David Platz (January 13, 1929 – May 20, 1994) was a German-born British music publisher and music business executive who established and led Essex Music, one of the major independent music publishing companies of the 1960s and 1970s. He also set up the Fly and Cube record labels.

The company quickly became successful, and Platz attracted a wide variety of musicians to use the agency, including the Rolling Stones, the Moody Blues, the Move, Procol Harum, the Who, Johnny Dankworth, Dudley Moore, Lonnie Donegan, David Bowie, and Marc Bolan. Black Sabbath's first contract had a clause signing over the band's publishing rights "in perpetuity" to Platz (and thereafter to his estate), which Ozzy Osbourne later estimated denied him over £100 million in revenue throughout his life.

He also helped finance and develop stage musicals, including working with Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley on Stop the World – I Want to Get Off in 1962 and The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd in 1964.

Between 1973 and 1986, Platz was the publishing director of the Performing Right Society. He died from motor neurone disease in 1994, at the age of 65.