Today we’d like to introduce you to Christian Hill.
Christian, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’ve always lived in Southern California; summer beach trips were almost a daily routine. The soundtrack to my youth would be a ‘Best Coast’ greatest hits album. After high school, I took a short drive south from LA and enrolled in UC San Diego to study Management Science (basically toss math, economics, and business management into a crockpot, and voila). My first year, I joined Red Bull’s marketing team. On any given day, the role had me take students skydiving, throw action sports film premieres, help plan an aerobatic airplane competition, sell pallets of product to supermarkets… the list goes on.
Soon, partnerships with concert committees started to form, and I was introduced to a three-piece, indie-electronic band called Moontower (@thisismoontower). Most of their fanbase was in Los Angeles, but they also recognized San Diego as a neighboring city just looking to dance; they brought me on to locate show opportunities in San Diego. The first time we met was actually months after our first phone call when they performed for a UCSD Greek Life event in Palm Springs. Within months, they were playing sold-out shows of 1,000 people with bands like Bad Suns and COIN in San Diego… they even performed on a yacht in the harbor!
During this time, the lead singer introduced me to a marketing director at Universal Music Group who then connected me with the San Diego college marketing rep. Having no formal industry experience, I was privileged to learn about every foundational topic from her. After shadowing her and learning the ropes, Capitol Records offered me an internship in Brand Partnerships and Sync Licensing the summer going into senior year. They have a wonderful program intent on educating students in all aspects of record label operations. A few weeks before my final year began, I joined UMG’s college marketing team where I handled album release record store parties, co-produced and filmed original content series, co-led a team of 20 other students in presenting ways the music industry and esports industry can co-brand, and attended more concerts than I can possibly count. The summer after graduation was filled with many job applications, but I found a great fit at Universal Music Group in the Sync department working across the rosters of Republic Records, Island Records, Def Jam Recordings, and Verve Label Group.
I’ll also share some of my favorite artists if you wanna give ‘em a listen: Lemaitre, Glass Animals, The Neighbourhood, ilo ilo, and The Knocks.
Oh, I’m also a photographer!
Has it been a smooth road?
There’s no clear route to enter the music industry; everyone finds their own unique path. To forge your own, you need ambition, humility, open-mindedness, and a love for music… among myriad other characteristics. The industry itself is also incredibly expansive, so there was an intimidating learning curve in the beginning. Asking questions and reading into the structure and history of the industry helped me overcome that curve. I still have so much to learn, but I’m fortunate to be in an environment where all I need to do is ask!
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I work equally across 4 of UMG’s record labels: Republic (Ariana Grande, Drake…), Island (Demi Lovato, Shawn Mendes…), Def Jam (Rihanna, Justin Bieber…), and Verve (Mandy Moore, Tank & The Bangas…). Sync is the realm of the music industry that handles all film, television, and advertisement placements… any time a song is put to picture. Everyone has an all-time favorite song from a movie – that’s sync at work! (one of mine is Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Tuesday’s Gone” at the end of Happy Gilmore).
How it works: there are music supervisors, producers, and other creatives at studios, networks, and agencies who are looking for the perfect song to fit their scene or commercial; based on their creative direction, we offer songs from our own repertoire that we believe would make a great fit. Once the client finds a song they like, they license it from us, and you see it on air! There’s a few more steps along the way, but in essence that’s how it goes!
I’m most proud of my team because of their strength as leaders and how much they’ve taught me creatively. They’re also total badasses. A million thanks to them. The labels themselves are among the best of the best, so I’m proud of the quality of music that we get to work with.
What’s your favorite memory from childhood?
There was one year in high school when my older brother and I overlapped as a senior and freshman, respectively. We swam on the same swim team, and every Tuesday and Thursday, we woke up in a daze for 4:30am practices. My brother, being newly licensed, would drive us both to school well before the sun rose, coincidentally right around when we started drinking coffee. I’d always recline my seat, and he was in a phase of playing the same three songs during every morning drive: Geographer’s “Kites,” Lord Huron’s “The Stranger,” and Neon Indian’s “Polish Girl.” We wouldn’t always say much during those drives, but they were symbolic moments. Perhaps they were our last moments of shared adolescent experience, and after that began our own unique paths of college and career. Those old Disneyland trips when we wore the same shirts so we wouldn’t get lost, to the final high school drive we had together. And those songs have stuck with me as the soundtrack to that experience, that concept of growing up. I actually got to share that story with Geographer when he played at UCSD my freshman year. I’m incredibly proud to see where my brother’s at now. It’s probably one of my favorite childhood memories.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://christianallenhill.com/
- Instagram: @christian__hill
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christianhillphotos
Image Credit:
Camden Hill, Brittany Harper, Jacob Fishman, Amelia Greene, Justin Tahara, Brittany Harper, Christian Hill
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