Caroline Bienstock, who previously served as president/CEO of Carlin Music, passed away in New York on Sept. 1 after a protracted illness. She was 68.
Bienstock was a longtime, stalwart indie music publisher, right up to the sale of Carlin Music for about $250 million to Round Hill Music in 2017. For years, the company was headquartered in the Brill Building and, like the famed location, it was home to many songs in the classic American Songbook, including such tunes as “What A Wonderful World” and “Sea of Love.” Carlin was also the music publisher for classic hits by Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Stephen Sondheim, AC/DC and James Brown, among others. The company’s catalog included “Spanish Harlem,” “Happy Together,” “Nashville Cats,” “Viva Las Vegas,” “When the Saints Go Marching In,” “Save the Last Dance for Me,” “Monster Mash,” “Good Lovin” and “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”
In 2016, Billboard reported that Carlin, which had offices in Nashville, London, Paris and New York, had 8,500 songwriters in its royalty system and more than 80,000 titles in its catalog.
Born in 1958, Bienstock was the daughter of two music industry legends. Her mother Mariam was an executive and co-founder of Atlantic Records, and her father, Freddie, bought out the owners of the publishing company he had worked for and renamed it Carlin Music in 1966. The company moniker was derived from the name of his then-8-year-old daughter Caroline. He called it Carlin after he realized he couldn’t call the company Caroline Music because Radio Caroline had the rights to the name, according to a story Billboard published in 1994. After graduating from Yale College and earning a law degree from Boston University, Caroline received an MBA from the Wharton School, according to the 2016 Billboard story.
Bienstock first practiced law and worked at Goldman Sachs before joining the Carlin in the late 1980s. Her father was initially resistant to the idea of her joining the family business, she told Billboard in 2016. But eventually he relented, and by 1993, she had risen to the position of CFO and COO. By 1998, she was president of the company. Along the way, she told Billboard that Carlin Music’s growth strategy “is to expand into new territories by buying catalogs in them.”
“As the person who is managing these assets for the benefit of the family,” she told Billboard in 2016, “I have to make the best possible decisions that aren’t based on nostalgia or sentiment.”
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Like her parents before, Bienstock made a name for herself as an industry leader. Beyond her responsibilities helming Carlin Music, she served at one time or another on the boards of the NMPA (National Music Publishers Association), ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), AIMP (American Independent Music Publishers) and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The latter group awarded her the Abe Olman Publisher Award in 2017.
In 2016, Bienstock told Billboard, “I remember attending an industry event with [my father] where somebody approached and said, ‘Oh, Freddy Bienstock. Are you Caroline Bienstock’s father?’ To him, that was just amazing because, of course, he was the music publishing legend and I was just his daughter.”
Bienstock is survived by her husband Douglas Rodrigues, her children and children-in-law, her grandchildren and her brother Robert Beinstock, who was also an executive at Carlin Music. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the ALS Association and/or Target ALS, in honor of Caroline’s life and legacy.
