GUY MOOT & CARIANNE MARSHALL: THE HITS INTERVIEW

Warner Chappell’s ruling tandem of Guy Moot and Carianne Marshall took over the leadership of the pubbery in 2019, and since then they've punched considerably above the company’s weight in terms of signings, market share and new initiatives. They and their team have inked Dua Lipa, Zach Bryan, Benson Boone and writer-producer Salaam Remi (Doja Cat, Amy Winehouse), among many others, and done big catalog deals with the estates of Tom Petty and David Bowie. Despite their very different backgrounds, the two execs have found a unique synergy—and they still claim to like each other. We didn’t bother asking what they thought of us.

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Say a bit about WCM’s place in the present marketplace and how it got there.

Guy Moot: April 1 marked the five-year anniversary of Carianne and my joining forces. When we got here, it was a company with great catalog, but needed a revamped strategy. When Carianne and I first came together, it was like one of those blind dates. But we immediately saw eye-to-eye on what we loved about publishing and what we wanted to do.

It’s simple, actually: We want to sign culturally relevant artists, songwriters who we feel proud of, who stand for something and resonate.

Carianne Marshall: We knew exactly what we wanted to do, what we wanted it to feel like. And then we had to think about how to do that. One of the things that makes us different from our competitors is our structure. We have global leads across business, finance, administration, creative services, synchronization and digital. And of course we have MDs in every territory. The MDs are responsible for their territories, but they also have to make sure that they’re aligned with the broader global business goals. And so we came up with a new company strategy.

Moot: And we involved everybody in the strategy.

Marshall: Including songwriters. We came up with values that are really important to us: collaboration, commitment and curiosity. Because there are people who can be incredibly talented, but if they’re not embodying those three principles, this is probably not the right place for them.

Talk about your place in the larger Warner edifice and the one Warner philosophy.

Marshall: Obviously it’s evolved. We both came here initially under Steve Cooper and Len Blavatnik. And of course, Len was—and is—very influential. It’s clear Robert Kyncl really understands publishing. He respects what we do.

Moot: Robert believes in the potential and growth of publishing. He has been very supportive.

Marshall: And the board has been really supportive too. Of course, we’ve had the opportunity to interact with them, discuss our strategy. And we’ve helped them understand the true value of publishing.

What do you look for as you determine whether to pursue or sign a writer or encourage your team to do so, and to what extent have your criteria changed, if at all?

Moot: I use the phrase “culturally relevant.” That type of writer and artist creates other opportunities around them. Whether it’s IP, films or musicals, it attracts other artists. It’s not just about market share during a quarter. It’s much more of a long-term game. We want to sign some great stuff and take some shots. The development process is gonna take maybe three to five years.

The days of having a hit and fast tracking at radio and selling a million albums, those days might have passed. So we encourage our teams to think through different levels. Of course we’ll be in on some big deals. But we can create a lot of opportunities for those in the mid-tier too.

Marshall: We don’t go after everything. We go after the things that our teams care about, and we think we can add value to.

Moot: That’s true with picking catalogs as well. There’s lots of people selling, but what can we add, and how can we grow that catalog?

Marshall: We don’t view our departments as front end and back end. Even administration has a front-and-center role in our business. Because we need to do right by our songwriters. We have a new global match system that we worked on with our technology team to make sure we’re finding every penny.

Moot: Last, everybody thinks they’ve got the best A&R team. I think we have the best A&R team, but I think we’ve also trained some of those people to be leaders.

Marshall: [Head of International A&R/U.K. MD] Shani Gonzales and [Germany MD] Natascha Augustin and [France MD] Matthieu Tessier—there are so many people that we’ve promoted internally who come from the creative side.

WMG has been going through a lot of change, not so much on the publishing side but on the recorded-music side. How is that affecting things?

Moot: Music companies often experience change—we’re not unique in that. During my time at EMI, we navigated many shifts in ownership, from private equity to sovereign wealth funds. So, by comparison, Warner’s solid, stable ownership situation is a big strength.

I’ve been close with Max [Lousada, outgoing Recorded Music chief] for many years, since well before my time at Warner, and we’re lifelong friends. I think he’s exceptional at what he does: creating an environment where both artists and execs can do their best work. Julie [Greenwald, outgoing Atlantic Music Group CEO] has always been very good to me too; she’s set the gold standard in artist development, leading an incredible era at Atlantic.

Marshall: It speaks to who Max and Julie are that the news was felt around the industry. They’ve both been such important figures at WMG for more than two decades.

We’re only a week into the transition, and everyone is making sure the focus stays on the music, our songwriters, and our artists. This is what we do as a music company, and what we always do at Warner Chappell. We know there’s a lot of great new music coming, and everyone is committed to setting up the artists and their teams for success.

Moot: I’ve known Elliot [Grainge, new Atlantic Music Group CEO] for a while too, and I respect everything he’s built with 10K. They’ve discovered talent across different genres, very early, and they’ve pioneered new ways of getting the music heard. We look forward to partnering with him more closely.

What has it been like working with your recorded-music counterparts? What do you expect will change with this leadership transition?

Moot: There’s a lot we’re already doing together. The foundation is strong, and it’s something that Robert’s been passionate about. We have great synergy; we’re signing artists and songwriters on both sides of the business. We recently partnered with ADA and 300, and also did a deal with 10K to sign new writers together and administer their existing publishing deals. Benelux is a market where there are unique dynamics, and there we brought in Niels Walboomers. He’s running both records and publishing and doing brilliantly.

Marshall: There’s also crossover with our catalogs. [SVP Creative Services, WCM] Ashley Winton and her team have been working closely with [President Global Catalog, WMG] Kevin Gore for some time to unlock different opportunities and collaborate on new projects. There’s a lot of excitement there. Recently, they partnered on Madonna’s 40th anniversary campaign as well as the David Bowie Moonage Daydream Grammy campaign. It’s all part of what differentiates WMG.

You spoke about songwriters becoming savvier about the larger picture of their careers and about the involvement of these other departments. What is being done and can be done to improve their economic outlook, given how unbalanced things have been for writers in the biz?

Marshall: It’s always a fight. We partner in the U.S. with David Israelite and the NMPA; they’ve been incredible advocates, especially with what’s going on right now with Spotify, which is so disappointing. I think education is power. We’re trying to make sure that our writers understand what they can do and how they can advocate.

Moot: We can talk about streaming rates, but it’s also how quickly you get paid. Why is there so much delay in getting writers paid? It’s also how much commission is coming off along the way. We’re pretty vocal about trying to drive down costs and commissions at the PRO level.

Marshall: Another one of our goals this year is to get more songs earning. We want to make sure that our writers aren’t just making money off that one big song, that there is more depth there.

At the other end of the value chain, we’ve seen catalogs balloon in value. And that seems to be in part a product of a change in terms of the players on that landscape.

Moot: It’s great that people see the value in catalogs and songwriters. We’re lucky to be in a group that’s quite entrepreneurial in its investment. And we brought in a younger catalog team because it’s really important to look through catalog not just through my age group, but through generations below.

I understand why people would want to sell. I mean, these aren’t dumb people. And yes, we are active in that space. But we only look to acquire catalogs where we can actively manage them and grow their value. We want to have fun working on these projects.

I also believe there’s a moral obligation to the music and the people we work with, to the catalogs we buy.

Marshall: To us, it’s not a good investment if our teams around the world don’t want to work on it.

Moot: So we just got Patrice Rushen; we’re so happy about that. I mean, “Forget Me Nots.” She’s amazing.

Marshall: We just signed Liz Phair, The Guess Who…

Moot: We signed Foreigner. I was after them for 10 years.

Marshall: This isn’t specific to catalog, but it reminds me, we want to be a destination for writers because they want to be partners with us. And that is really starting to happen. It’s exciting. We signed Sharon Van Etten a while ago. There’s no way she would’ve considered Warner Chappell a handful of years ago it wouldn’t have been the right place for her. So we’re feeling really excited about being a company that can satisfy writers and catalog managers who are interested in that proposition, in adding value and having a partnership and really connecting with our teams around the world.

Please say a little bit about the team, and maybe you can start by talking about the A&R people.

Moot: Ryan Press is president of North America. He’s a publisher through and through. There are people in the business who talk a lot and don’t do much. He’s the other end of that. He’s an incredible executive. He’s built a great U.S. team. We’ve recently promoted and extended David Goldsen; obviously he’s signed Zach Bryan; he’s signed Mitski. We’ve got Gabz Landman; she signed Amy Allen. They’re both building incredible rosters.

Marshall: It’s been really fun to see our teams develop too. What Ben Vaughn’s doing in Nashville and Gustavo Menéndez in Miami and Latin America.

Moot: And Shani Gonzales in Europe, who is running international A&R.

Marshall: It’s important to mention, when we talk about the broader team, some of the folks we have in senior positions, they’ve done a bunch of different jobs before. We think it’s really interesting to hire people with different types of backgrounds as long as they’re super-passionate about music. Ashley Winton, who runs creative services, was previously a music supervisor. She ran the music team at Nat Geo. Claire McAuley, who runs the administration team for us globally, worked at an ad agency and worked in legal at a publishing company. Jenni Pfaff runs our strategy and operations team, and comes from HR. Rich Robinson, who runs sync, came from the advertising world, and so on.

Guy and I have been publishers our entire careers, pretty much, so that means there are also some blind spots. So you hire people from outside the business or who come from different places, and it really rounds it off very well.

I’d like to get into your backstories now. Carianne, tell me a little bit about your first contact with music and when you first became aware of what publishing was.

Marshall: My parents were civilians. I didn’t grow up with anybody in the music business. I was really close friends with the guy who was the keyboard player in a local band. He came to my house and sat down at the piano; I don’t even remember what he played, but it was so good. And I asked Steve, how many years have you taken piano lessons? And he goes, “I’ve never taken a lesson in my life.”

And I swear to God, it was like that moment where I was like, people can just do that? And somewhere in my head I was like, how do I somehow help people who do that? And so I started working with their manager and doing local production and promotion. And I got an internship at Elektra Records, which turned into a job. I didn’t know what publishing was, though, until I was looking for a job in 1999 because my gig was going away. I ran into my friend Betsy Anthony, who now works with us at Warner Chappell, at an X show at the Palladium.

I had snuck into the VIP area with my wristbands that I kept in my car. Betsy was running the West Coast department A&R department for Universal Publishing, and there was an assistant job open in A&R. She’s like, “I’ll pass along your resume, but only if you really care about it.” I was like, “Eh, publishing sounds so boring.” And she says, “Let me tell you why it’s not. Let me tell you what I love about songwriters.” She schooled me. And I ended up getting a job as an A&R assistant at Universal Publishing. I’ve been in publishing ever since. That was 1999.

That’s right. God, we’ve known each other for a quarter century. Tell me about Chuck Kaye and how he served as a mentor to you.

Marshall: I wrote something with a little bit of help after he passed away. Chuck was like my music-business dad or something. He promoted me to my first executive job. I was an A&R coordinator. At the time, people were kind of caring about sync, but not really. And Chuck decided that we should have a dedicated sync person, and I should be it. And I said, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” And he goes, “We’ll figure it out; otherwise I’ll fire you. But I believe you can do it.”

He was always very matter of fact, no mincing words. He was the one who helped me decide to leave Universal and go to SONGS. He was always so encouraging. He was the first person I called to tell about this job because he had bought Chappell Music. He was the chairman of Warner Publishing and bought Chappell. He was a really wonderful guy.

And do you want to say a word or two about SONGS?

Marshall: Well, everyone knows we had The Weeknd, Lorde and Diplo. But you probably haven’t heard of most of our writers, many of whom were able to make a living writing songs. It’s something I’m really proud of and has been foundational for the work that we’re doing here. It was a great 12 years. A handful of the SONGS folks are here now, which is fun. It was a special place.

Guy, we’ve chatted before about your background. But let’s revisit your earliest involvement in music.

Moot: I was sort of pummeled with standards and mainstream jazz by my parents in the car. It was Radio 1, Radio Luxembourg. Radio was a big ally to me growing up. I didn’t have the most distinguished school career. I was eager to get out into the world. And the school was quite happy to usher me into the world. It was by mutual benefit. I did some nine-to-five work at building sites.

But then I applied to get a job in a record shop and eventually started managing record shops and started going to gigs; I’d write gig reviews and send them off to people. My brother-in-law at the time was working for CBS Songs or April Music at the time. And I really learned about publishing there and I started applying for A&R jobs. One came up at ATV Music, which was still pre-Michael Jackson. I was in an office in Mayfair in London, and I had an empty contact book. I started phoning studios, just anybody I could make an introduction to. It was like, “Do you know any good talent? Do you know any good songwriters?” And that was the beginning.

I was there for about nine months until Jackson bought the company and made everybody redundant. Then I had a very brief stint at Chrysalis Records. That was the only time I did records. Pete Edge was working next door to me. There was an incredible bunch of people there, but I decided publishing gave you a lot more options. So I phoned my old boss, and she said, “There’s a role at SBK, but I need you to meet Marty Bandier; he likes to meet all of our new A&R people.” So I met Marty, who had his feet up on his desk, smoking a cigar, wearing a white shirt with his initials on it and wearing those fancy braces…

Marshall: We call them suspenders over here.

Moot: That’s lingerie.

Marshall: Oh, my God, I learn so much every day.

We’ll include an Anglo-American glossary at the end of the interview. But back to Marty…

Moot: When I first met him, he was intimidating. He exuded power, the smell of money, but he’s got such a common touch with people and such a warmth about him. There’s no reason why he should have listened to some kid who was going through every phase of club culture. But he always gave me time.

I’d always get him to approve my deals and as I walked out of the office, he’d say, “Guy, one last thing: Don’t fuck this up.” It was with a subtle humor, but also with a slight menace. But we had an incredible time together.

And then you were running the U.K. office of the company. Can you say a bit about coming to the U.S., making that move?

Moot: I was coming to the U.S. a lot when I was U.K. MD, then I was also doing European creative. There was a lot of music that was coming from the U.S. that resonated in Europe, like hip-hop. All of the big dance records that came out in New York at the time were huge in Europe. So I always had this thing, I’d just go wherever the music was.

Being in the U.S. has been great. People definitely work harder here. So it made me up my game. Carianne and I are really lucky. We still like each other five-plus years later. That’s a good sign, right? We joke about it, but we are really lucky that we have such a good partnership. We want the same things. We’re moving in the same direction. That’s how it started, and that’s where we still are.