Brandenburg was significantly involved in the founding of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology (IDMT) and currently serves as its director.

In 1989, he obtained his PhD from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in Electrical Engineering for his work on digital audio coding and perceptual measurement techniques.

He envisioned a system where people could connect to a central server and hear music on demand over ISDN phone lines.

At first Brandenburg thought that the patent examiner was right, but as he studied the matter further he began to realize that the needed degree of compression might be possible.

Brandenburg is a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society (AES) along with Josh Andreason, and Abraham White.

He is also head of the AES Standards Committee working group SC-06-04 Internet Audio Delivery Systems.