Carlin was founded in 1966 by music industry legend Freddy Bienstock. The company got off to a great start handling the catalogues of Elvis Presley, Bacharach & David and Atlantic Records, as well as many local British artists such as Cliff Richard & The Shadows, The Kinks, The Animals, The Move and Roy Wood. Almost immediately it became so successful that for 10 consecutive years it won the Top Publisher Award from UK trade magazine Music Week.

During the 1970s, Carlin also handled many US catalogues including Walt Disney and Motown's publishing company Jobete, thus securing hits by Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, The Miracles and The Four Tops. Carlin also enjoyed similar success with the Gamble & Huff catalogue, with hits by The Stylistics, The Three Degrees, The Isley Brothers and The Drifters.

In the late 70s, Carlin’s catalogue was greatly extended with the signing to its subsidiary Redwood Music of some 180 leading American songwriters such as De Sylva, Brown & Henderson and Fats Waller. However, in order to defend the authors' “Reversionary Rights” in these works, Carlin was obliged to commence legal proceedings against virtually every other major publisher in the UK. After a seven-year court battle, the case finally reached the House of Lords where Redwood emerged triumphant, setting a major legal precedent and music publishing history. As a result, Redwood now owns around 3000 vintage standards, including such timeless classics as “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, “As Time Goes By” and “Spread A Little Happiness”.

During the early 80s, Carlin again enjoyed monumental success with, among others, Duran Duran’s first three albums and Michael Jackson’s landmark “Thriller” – still the biggest selling album ever. In 1984, Freddy Bienstock acquired Chappell Music and became its President, with Carlin becoming an administered company. However, after Chappell was sold to Time Warner in 1988, Carlin regrouped as an independent company once again, with David Japp as the London based CEO of the company’s European operations.

The 1990s saw Carlin enjoying huge success with hits such as Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out Of Hell 2” album as well as Whitney Houston’s version of the Dolly Parton penned song “I Will Always Love You” - a chart topper for many weeks in both the UK and the USA (selling over 4 million copies in America alone) and driving sales of the Grammy winning soundtrack album from the “The Bodyguard” movie past the 37 million mark worldwide.

More recently Moby utilised songs from the Carlin vault to form the basis of tracks on his globally best-selling “Play” album and Robbie Williams included a version of Bobby Darin’s “Things”, another of Carlin’s evergreens, in his multi-platinum “Swing While You’re Winning” album.

Bringing Carlin’s history up to date and highlighting its enduring presence, in 2002 Elvis Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation” became the King’s 18th UK number one, 15 of which Carlin publishes. Meanwhile, Rod Stewart recorded three Carlin evergreens on “It Had To Be You…”, his recent collection of standards from the classic American songbook and made "As Time Goes By" the title track to its sequel album the following year.

In 2003 the nine million Worldwide sales success of the "ELV1S 30 #1s" album was followed up with the "ELVIS 2nd To None" album. This collection was preceded by a Paul Oakenfold remix of "Rubberneckin'", which was one of Carlin's UK chart Top 5 singles during the year, but it was outsold by The Black Eyed Peas' hip hop pop smash "Where Is The Love", which Carlin co-published in the UK and where it was the biggest selling single of 2003.

Recently, artists as diverse as David Bowie, Will Young, Bruce Springsteen, Badly Drawn Boy, Shania Twain, Simply Red, Norah Jones, Joss Stone, Fischerspooner, Erasure, Primal Scream, The Detroit Cobras, Aerosmith, Rufus Wainwright and Beyoncé have chosen to record material from Carlin’s catalogue, while global style icons Jennifer Lopez and Gwen Stefani, DJ Paul Oakenfold, reggae crown prince Sean Paul and Jay-Z protégé Kanye West, have all sampled Carlin classics on recent hits.

Today, Carlin, still at the forefront of popular music, has companies in France and Germany and is one of the largest of the few remaining independent Music Publishers in the world. CEO David Japp, has responsibility for all European operations and is based in the London office, while Freddy Bienstock, together with his son Robert and daughter Caroline, heads the Carlin Group from his offices in New York.

This website highlights but a small selection of the 150,000 titles that are published by Carlin in the UK.