Back in the late ‘90s, Carianne Marshall was bored by the idea of working in music publishing.
She’d spent three years at Elektra Records, after starting her career in live music production, and was at a crossroads. At a show by LA punk rock act X, she ran into a friend, who at the time was West Coast A&R for UMPG.
“She said, ‘Have you ever thought about music publishing?’,” Marshall remembers. “I said, ‘No, copyrights, that sounds boring.” The friend, probably a little insulted, proceeded to wax lyrical about her job, which was, according to her, the beginning of everything and highly creative. ‘There’s nothing without a song.’
Intrigued, Marshall quickly changed her stance and gladly accepted an offer to pass on her resume for an A&R assistant job on the UMPG team. She got the gig, which kickstarted an impressive and highly successful trajectory through music publishing.
