Caroline Bienstock, former president and CEO of Carlin Music, died in New York, United States, on Sept. 1 after a protracted illness. She was 68.
Bienstock spent decades at Carlin, the independent music publishing company her father named after her, and remained at its helm until the catalog was sold to Round Hill Music for about $250 million in 2017.
Career and catalog#
For years, Carlin Music was headquartered in New York’s Brill Building. Its holdings included many songs from the classic American Songbook, such as “What A Wonderful World” and “Sea of Love.”
The company published classic hits recorded by Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Stephen Sondheim, AC/DC and James Brown, among others. Its catalog also 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”
- “Total Eclipse of the Heart”
By 2016, Carlin had offices in Nashville, London, Paris and New York, with 8,500 songwriters in its royalty system and more than 80,000 titles in its catalog.
Family and education#
Born in 1958, Bienstock was the daughter of two music industry figures. Her mother, Mariam, was an executive and co-founder of Atlantic Records. Her father, Freddie, bought the publishing company where he had worked and renamed it Carlin Music in 1966.
The name Carlin came from his then-8-year-old daughter Caroline. He chose it after learning he could not call the company Caroline Music because Radio Caroline held the rights to that name.
Bienstock graduated from Yale College, earned a law degree from Boston University, and received a Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School.
Leadership and industry roles#
Before joining Carlin in the late 1980s, Bienstock practiced law and worked at Goldman Sachs. Her father was initially resistant to her joining the family business, she said in a 2016 interview, but he eventually relented. By 1993, she had become chief financial officer and chief operating officer, and by 1998 she was president of the company.
She said 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 said in the same interview, “I have to make the best possible decisions that aren’t based on nostalgia or sentiment.”
Beyond Carlin, Bienstock served on the boards of the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the American Independent Music Publishers (AIMP) and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Songwriters Hall of Fame gave her the Abe Olman Publisher Award in 2017.
In 2016, she recalled an industry event where someone approached her father and asked, “Oh, Freddy Bienstock. Are you Caroline Bienstock’s father?” She said that was amazing to him because he was the music publishing legend and she was just his daughter.
Survivors#
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.
