The 2026 MITS Award
'You've Got To Hear This':
The Career-Long Creed of Guy Moot
By Paul Sexton
How do you make the unlikely transition from fledgling jobs as a tractor driver and a welder to superintending one of the biggest song catalogues in the world?
To get the irresistible and inevitable wordplay out of the way early on, it's a Moot point.
It's also a story that has taken Guy Moot from the "wrong side" of a Gloucestershire spa town, via the Cotswolds and then the London music scene, to the Arts District of Los Angeles, where he serves as Chair and CEO of Warner Chappell Music. In the seven years since he joined WCM, Moot and his team have burnished a roster of stellar songwriters – many of them also culture-shifting artists and/or producers – that now stretches from RAYE to David Bowie, Dua Lipa to Quincy Jones, George Michael to Madonna.
Warner Chappell has also played an essential part in generating revenues reported across the entire WMG portfolio for Q3 2026 of nearly $2 billion. The publishing company's piece of that pie approached $400 million – a year-on-year increase just shy of 12%. If it was Quincy himself that once reminded us we’ve been working with the same 12 notes for hundreds of years, then it's publishers like Moot who keep on proving that the song remains king. In his hands, those precious dozen notes remain as eloquent and evocative as ever.
On 9th November, Moot's pathway from the Cotswolds to California brings him back to Britain and to the peer-packed ballroom of the Grosvenor House Hotel, where he will become the 34th recipient of the Music Industry Trusts Award. In a list of honorees that includes such contemporaries as Jason Iley, Rob Stringer, and Emma Banks; industry forebears like Ahmet Ertegun, Maurice Oberstein, and John Deacon; and musical titans including Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Annie Lennox, and Peter Gabriel, Guy is the first publisher to be recognised. For him, that makes it a double-strength distinction.
"We've come out of the shadows," says Moot drily, on a summer visit to Warner Chappell's London office. His award night will be a proud moment, both personally and for the sector he has served for more than 30 years. But far beyond that, he is determined that it will represent more than just lip service to the charities for which the MITS has raised over £7 million: the BRIT Trust and Nordoff and Robbins Music Therapy.
"I've gone from thinking 'Oh my god, I'm really nervous' to 'This is great, you're getting older, just enjoy it,’” he reflects. "I wouldn't be there without having incredible songwriting and performing talent around me, so I'm conscious of that. I'm a facilitator. It’s really all about two incredible charities, and I just want to have a really good night for them. I want to do the best we can to raise money, and I don't take that responsibility lightly. I wouldn't do it if I didn't wholly believe in what they stand for and what they do. I've spoken to both of them about how we can do something a little bit more sustainable."
On the morning of our conversation, Moot was chatting to BRIT School principal Stuart Worden. "I said to Stuart that I want this to be significant, as in how we as Warner Chappell, or Warner Music Group, can support those charities going forward. I was talking about getting more of our songwriters to go down there and do masterclasses, and get more of our A&R people involved. We should be close to all that talent."
A frequent member of Billboard's prestigious Power 100, Moot marked his industry card during a long spell as UK MD and President of European Creative at EMI Music. You don't win Music Week's Publisher of the Year trophy for 14 years straight without the sort of killer roster that Guy assembled at EMI, which included signing groundbreaking talent such as Jamiroquai (of whom more soon), Arctic Monkeys, Sean Paul, and Calvin Harris, as well as orchestrating brilliant collaborations like Amy Winehouse joining forces with Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi.
Moot was instrumental in Sony and EMI's European publishing merger in 2012, and in Sony's full acquisition of the EMI catalogue six years later. As President of Worldwide Creative, he then welcomed the likes of Ed Sheeran, Drake, and Charli xcx into the fold.
Not bad for a one-time tractor boy. He was born in Cheltenham, which "has quite a posh reputation," he says, before adding with a smile: "I've since learned that I grew up on the wrong side of town." He then moved with his parents to a little village in the Cotswolds between Stow and Chipping Norton, which he found "incredibly boring. But I had a radio, and it had a profound effect on me. It was Radio 1 during the day, and Luxembourg at night.”
That despite the fact that, as so many of us recall, the reception was less than crystal clear. "I remember I used to have to mark the stations with little scratches on my medium wave. They faded all over the shop but it was access to actual contemporary music. And I did manage to occasionally get into the nearest town and buy records.”
But music as a lifetime pursuit? "I think like a lot of people, I didn't know it was a career path, to be honest with you," he confides. "So I started working in record shops all around the shires, and I think that gave me that A&R instinct. If you bought early, you got a special deal, which increased your margin. But of course once you've committed, you then have to sell it. So you had to believe it was good."
That first shop, and Moot's unconscious entry point to a lifetime in music, was Music Market, a small independent chain with stores in towns such as Swindon, Reading, Bath, and Banbury, which was then bought by Our Price. "During that time," he says, "I was just driving to gigs and writing reviews for A&R people that I started to know through the sales people that came in from different record companies.
"I loved turning people on to great music," he goes on. "And you knew which titles were selling, because you had to restock. I was really happy to talk about it, and I think that's still the origin of what A&R and publishing are about. We're lucky to work with incredible music, and I get to go and talk to people about it and say 'You've got to hear this.'
His first move, indeed, was into A&R. "When I got my first talent scouting job, which was at ATV Music before Michael Jackson bought it, I would head to a town, go and meet the social secretary at the university, the radio guy, the local fans, and bands," he remembers. "That's how I started. It might be a Sunday night in Bootle or somewhere.
"Everyone talks about Manchester, but there was also that Liverpool scene with the La's, and Coventry had a great thing going on, even though I was too young for 2-Tone. Scotland was hopping – I did drive, but I only had a 900cc Fiesta, so driving up there was quite an undertaking. I took the shuttle."
Then there was the London circuit. "I'd end up in Le Beat Route, the Fulham Greyhound, the Half Moon in Putney, and always the Embassy Club, at like 3am," Moot recalls. "It was pretty gruelling, I must admit, but then club culture started, and I was very comfortable in that – more than my time on sticky floorboards."
At EMI, his first big signing was Jamiroquai. "That was a product of going clubbing," he says, citing the influence of Kiss FM DJ Norman Jay. "I met Jay Kay on the streets of Soho, and their manager gave me his lyrics. I read them, and they were amazing, because they were about issues that weren't talked about at the time, especially ecology. The first time I saw the band, I took Lincoln Elias, who was in A&R at Sony, to the Milk Bar. Jamiroquai did two songs, 'When You Gonna Learn' and a Stevie Wonder cover, and I did the deal. That's A&R, isn't it? You can fly to the ends of the earth, or the talent can be right under your nose."
Ask Guy for an example of a song in the Warner Chappell catalogue that keeps reinventing itself, and he offers a jewel in the Great American Songbook that's now more than 90 years old. "Gershwin's 'Summertime' has been used in so many scenarios across the decades," he says, "and that's what our job is as publishers: to keep breathing new life into those songs, whether it's a sync placement, a sample, or an anniversary to create awareness. It's about keeping songs alive."
Early in 2022, for example, Warner Chappell secured global rights to the hallowed catalogue of David Bowie by doing its homework with rigour and imagination. "You think where the immersive space is going. With Bowie, the guy was so visionary, talking about AI and the internet. He was an embracer of tech. So we always have a huge plan when we go in – what we need to execute, and what the viability is of that catalogue to different generations."
Moot's instinct for artistic excellence has taken him all around the world: to Jamaica to sign Sean Paul, for example, or to Norway to secure Stargate, or France to explore the indigenous rap scene, especially in Marseille. "I say to all our A&R people that it's really important, wherever the music comes from, to immerse yourself in that culture, and understand those people, and it's such a privilege to be able to do that."
The basic truth that has been the constant thread through the career of the 2026 MITS Award honoree still serves him faithfully: to go wherever the music takes you. "If you're going to win the deal," says Moot, "you have to have some empathy with those artists, wherever they came from, and that could be anywhere. And I still love that ethic."
MITS committee member Paul Sexton writes and broadcasts about music. His book 'Rock Goes To College: The Campus Music Scene That Shaped A Generation’ is published by Mudlark/HarperCollins, and ’The Rolling Stones: On Tour’ by Welbeck/Headline.
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