Tag: #mypennpath

“Are you sure there isn’t anything else you’d rather do?”

This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the Career Services Summer Funding grant.  We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending the summer.  You can read the entire series here.

This entry is by Kevin Sweeney, COL ’16

The entertainment industry is a fickle beast, and the music industry is no exception. It’s the wild west, where there are no rules and the money follows the gunslingers with the strongest allies. It’s in an accelerating tailspin in the midst of a tech revolution with little hope for the future.

Talk to any manager, agent, or label rep and you’re likely to get some variation of these sentiments. A few will probably ask, “Are you sure there isn’t anything else you’d rather do?” And while youthful optimism will prompt an almost rhetorical “No way,” there’s plenty of truth to these prevailing themes.

And also plenty of untruth, as I learned this summer. Working as an intern in music management, I sat at the crossroads of the cogs of the industry. My firm, Mick Artists Management, represents a wide array of established acts including Childish Gambino, Leon Bridges, Passion Pit, WALK THE MOON, Frank Ocean and others. Watching these careers play out from behind the proverbial curtain, I got to test the advice I had received.

Fickle? Yes. Clients’ career arcs can be about as predictable as the weather. But more often, they follow carefully planned cycles, monitored through an endless stream of consumer data, and nurtured with a healthy dose of tactful pavement pounding.

While the relationship management with radio execs, label execs, and agents was left to the professionals, I had the pleasure of playing my own part. For WALK THE MOON, I assembled weekly reports detailing trends in album sales, radio spins, song streams, and social media engagement. I got to watch the rise and gentle decline of one of the summer’s hottest songs and provide some insights as we helped a client gracefully ride the wave of their success.

As for the “wild west” depiction, it’d be more accurate to say that the rules exist but they’re constantly changing. An artists’ union exists, as well as a whole number of fluid standards in copyright law, song royalties, and recording contracts. In reality, the business of a profitable recording artist is much less of a hectic money grab and more of a carefully divided pie. For my part, I did things as mundane as train uptown to retrieve royalties checks from ASCAP to more interesting projects like assembling archives and album metadata as an artist made a transition to full ownership over their recording catalog.

Last, the idea that the music industry is in irreversible decline is simply untrue. Live performance continues to enjoy some of the best revenue figures in music history, and the larger fish in the pond are frequently making strategic investments in music tech startups that seek to change the way we listen to, discover, and experience music.

I watched as a partner in my firm grew his own tech-influenced project – a rental marketplace for touring equipment – while others met with emerging tastemakers on services like Spotify and Soundcloud. I tried to help where I could, interfacing with various music tech companies that were looking to bring Mick on as a client, from concert streaming services to ticketing apps.

More than anything, this summer has taught me that the trenches of the music industry can be a confusing mess – one that entails talent reps from labels, agencies, and management firms, each with their own share of relatively unglamorous legwork to do. But together they deliver a profoundly unique product – one that can be as thrilling to sell as it is to experience. While it’s difficult to tell whether management is the right fit for me and my career, I can scarcely envision a future for myself without music business as a central component.

“This Could Only Exist in Berlin”

This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the Career Services Summer Funding grant.  We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending the summer.  You can read the entire series here.

This entry is by Katie Black, PennDesign, LArch ’16

If there’s anything previous travel has taught me, it has been that almost always, my expectations of a city, it’s culture, places, and people, rarely match reality. Prior to moving to Berlin this summer, I kept this in mind.

Yet despite how much I tried, I had mental images of what the place would be like. In my stereotype-laden daydreams, Berlin was some kind of never-never land where artists and musicians lived in moody hovels, pushing the boundaries of their life’s work, while major political movements that epitomize the world’s zeitgeist forge on in the background. It was a hipster rats-nest, where you’re expected to stay up clubbing until sunrise and take advantage of the god-given ability to drink in its many public places. Everywhere in Berlin would be loaded with history, every street would have a million stories.

My convoluted images of the city were mish-mashed against the fact that I was coming to Berlin for work. My knowledge of landscape architecture offices, of deadlines and of cherished sleep after a long day of work, clashed with this David Bowie fantasyland I envisaged. I had no idea what my life would be like in Berlin, and when I got on the plane, I was scared.  How would I survive? How would I fit in?

The city and the internship that awaited me were both intimidating, and, for the first few weeks, life was lonely and challenging. Working at an international landscape architecture office on design competitions, I was one small part of a team of interns who helped to create graphics and design drawings that communicated the concepts, strategies, and intentions of the partners and associates at the helm of the firm. We were expected to work quickly and our office had high standards for our outputs.

While I worked long hours, I still had many chances to experience the city that at first seemed so daunting. My bike ride to work took me straight down Karl Marx Allee, a monumental socialist boulevard and a major axis of former East Berlin. I turned past the TV Tower towards the office, in an older part of city-center. My flatmates and coworkers were kind and welcoming, came from all over the world, and were happy to explore the city and show me their favorite places whenever we could.

Ultimately, my imagined disparity between a fantastical city and a demanding job proved untrue – they were not two separate entities but a tightly intertwined experience. As time went on, I found myself saying more and more, ‘This could only exist in Berlin’. My work experience, the projects I was exposed to, the people I met, all came together because of the pull of the city. I am so happy to have had the opportunity to learn about my chosen profession, international practice, and what makes cities magical.

An Upright Citizen

This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the Career Services Summer Funding grant.  We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending the summer.  You can read the entire series here.

This entry is by Aleah Welsh, COL ’16

WelshI’m running up 8th avenue. There’s a cool breeze but I’m hot and my legs are starting to cramp as my body rejects this sudden burst of physical activity it’s not accustomed to. It’s 4:53pm on a Friday and I’m going to be late to my interview with the Upright Citizens Brigade. I race into the lobby and slip on my “formal shoes” – suede booties with a small heel. I take the elevator to the twelfth floor trying to press the creases out of my shirt and letting the air conditioning cool my face and dry my sweat, the Declaration of Independence hidden safely in the lining of my briefcase. It’s 5:01. My breathing is still a little heavy as I meet my interviewer and look around at the other jeans-and-sneaker clad people in the office. I’m over dressed. I look down at the resume in my hand and realize it’s written entirely in comic sans. Dammit. I can’t believe I’ve screwed this up.

That day, as I walked aimlessly away from 520 8th avenue eating the street hot dog I had promised myself earlier, I convinced myself that this would be a funny memory if I got the job and not a painful tale of a horribly botched opportunity. You can imagine my surprise and excitement when, a month later, I got the news that I would, in fact, be spending my summer in New York City as a social media intern for one of the top comedy theaters in the world.

I’m one of four social media interns working with UCB this summer. My duties have ranged from drafting tweets to promote the various shows, to creating a photo scavenger hunt around Manhattan to promote the Del Close Marathon, an annual 56-hour-long improv festival. My boss handles all of the analytics for UCB’s social media presence, however, I have the freedom to craft posts for the company’s Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Facebook. When I’m not organizing press mentions on an excel sheet or drafting tweets (I draft a lot of tweets), I’m familiarizing myself with UCB’s content and tone so my posts will remain consistent with the UCB voice. It has forced me to consider, from a branding perspective, the challenge of crafting a singular tone in the digital world that comes from multiple people.

The most exciting time of my internship was definitely working the Del Close Marathon. The festival brings together top improvisers from around the world including many famous comedians. During the marathon it was my job to keep UCB’s twitter account up to date on the size of the crowd at each of the seven venues so people could more easily decide which shows to attend. Walking from venue to venue all day gave me the chance to meet and talk to many different audience members, performers and creators. When I wasn’t working the festival I was able to attend some of the many shows and after parties. I got to know my fellow interns and really got a sense of what it feels like to be a part of this larger UCB community. I can confidently say that that weekend was one of the best experiences of the summer. The sense of excitement and community from participating in a celebration of something I love so much, something that everyone around me cares so much about, was joyfully overwhelming.

The end of the summer is near as is my time at UCB, but lately it feels like I eat, sleep and breathe comedy. I’m constantly engaged during my time in the UCB office but it doesn’t end there. As an intern I’m granted free admission to most UCB shows which I frequently go to with friends, other interns or sometimes alone. Some of the most memorable moments have been seeing performances by Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, Chris Gethard, Paul Adsit, Zack Woods and Amy Poehler (twice). Furthermore, being in this creative and supportive environment has inspired me to work on some of my own material; I’ve even tried my hand at stand up a few times.

This summer I’ve experienced what it means to like your job— not just your coworkers or the office environment— but what it’s like to be truly invested in the mission of the company and everything it stands for. Regardless of where I end up after graduation this is something I hope to find again, in any career.

My Female Summer in NYC – Living & Working With Women

This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the Career Services Summer Funding grant.  We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending the summer.  You can read the entire series here.

This entry is by Klaudia Amenábar, COL ’16

KlaudiaMy experiences working in groups of women has never been good. I’m a dancer and an actress, and in those environments it usually turns catty and unsupportive. So when I started my summer internship at MOGUL, a content sharing platform startup for women, and moved to a historic women’s boardinghouse in New York, I was honestly nervous. But on my first day, I went to a yacht party and saw T-Pain live. Welcome to MOGUL! This was going to be awesome.

I should start with living in New York. So far, I have found very few negatives – I feel the happiest I’ve been in a long time here, like I belong, like I have everything that I need around me. Sometimes I take a taxi to work just to stick my head out the window and feel the breeze and the city on my face. Even when I’m alone I feel like I’m in the right place, on the right path. I don’t know if this comes from what I’m doing or where I am, but I’ve always loved the city, and always loved New York. I come from Washington, DC, but the suburbs, and went to Penn because it was in a city. Deep down, I always knew I’d end up in New York after graduation, and this summer has only confirmed how much I want that. It has also given me the confidence to make that dream happen – I was honestly scared of moving straight to the city, but now that I’ve been here for a while in my “summer preview”, I can’t wait.

Despite loving New York so much, most of my time here has been dedicated to MOGUL. I knew going in that working at a small but fast-growing startup would be all-encompassing, but I had no idea what it meant professionally. When I worked on Capitol Hill, my work ended when I left. But at a small company like this, I have been given a lot of responsibility, and entrusted with a lot. Some days I go home and still have hours of work to do, but I remember that THAT is what I’m here for. 

While the work is engrossing and I’ve learned more than I could in a whole semester at school, my favorite part of the experience has been my coworkers. We work in a shared office, 4 employees plus some interns and remote coworkers, so we spend the whole day on our computers together. The conversation in the office flows seamlessly from closing investor deals to someone’s date last night, and we switch from laughing at cat videos to silently pinging each other on GMAIL chat. I feel personally connected to every woman in the office, especially the CEO Tiffany, and my mentor and department boss, Namisha. The women in this office are incredibly busy, and incredibly accomplished, and they take time out of their day that they could be making money to sit with me and teach me about marketing (and about life). I don’t mind staying late to work when I know I’ll have them by my side, simultaneously writing partner proposals and showing me an awesome new website to buy affordable dresses. 

My experience working at a startup, especially one staffed and created by women, has included everything from celebrity retweets and cool events to mountains of work and Chinese takeout. I am so glad they want me to continue working for them part time in the fall, because I would miss these women so much – their expertise, unique personalities and amazing generosity. 

Check out MOGUL at onmogul.com!

 

The Ups and Downs of a D.C. Internship

This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the Career Services Summer Funding grant.  We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending the summer.  You can read the entire series here.

This entry is by Zahra Mion, COL ’16

minonMy summer internship experience has definitely been a rollercoaster ride. Though I knew I wanted to work in politics, it had taken me much longer than expected to reconcile myself to the idea. All my closest friends were spending the summer in New York; I was  living more than two hour train ride away from my family and hometown friends; and I would be living by myself in a city I had only visited and knew no one in. But at the same time, I had gotten my dream internship — working for the Commission on Civil Rights. I always knew that I wanted to somehow combine my passion for civil rights, politics, the law and social change but never really wanted to be a politician, considered law school but was terrified by the idea and could not envision working on less than 30,000$ a year for a non-profit type organization. So the Commission seemed perfect to me.

Of course I knew I wouldn’t be writing reports for Congress or the President as an intern, but even with that understanding my experience was not at all what I was expecting. To put it simply, it was a lot like learning how sausage is made. I never truly understood just how huge our government is, and how much red tape there is until I got my first assignment. It seemed pretty straight forward: research each state’s Equal Employment Policy, paying specific attention for mention of transgender or gender identity language. I expected all the states to have similar policies, mostly because when I think of Equal Employment one specific definition comes to mind. However, after digging and digging to even find the actual policy of states, the range of language was unbelievable— there were some states that didn’t publish their policy, others that only mentioned equal employment with consideration to race, class and gender, and still others that included things like genetic history.

Eventually, my tasks got a little more substantive and I was assigned to analyze the federal governments compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) for an upcoming report on immigrant detention facilities. Again, I had a bit of an eye-opening experience. When I asked my supervisor what sources I should be relying on, I was told to use anything. Now, perhaps it was me being naive about how DC runs but I was shocked. I hardly use EBSCO in my research papers (I’m much more of a JSTOR person), so having free range for a government mandated assignment seemed wrong to me. When I found myself on a white supremacist site, I obviously used my common sense and did not quote the website, but for some reason the casualness of the task shocked me. One of the things I liked most about my internship was how much I learned through my research. Sure, every now and then I would find myself on a white supremacist site or somehow reading about how the illuminati was really running the government, but for the most part I was reading reports from the ACLU, DOJ, MALDEF, HRC and other civil rights groups. Not only was I able to greatly increase my knowledge of immigration issues, but I also found a lot of organizations that I would love to work for in the future.

On more than one occasion, my intern friends and I went to the Hill to watch Senate hearings (one of the many perks of living in DC). Again, I experienced the paradox of Washington—somehow very casual and very serious at the same time. I was sitting behind Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, her body guards were seated on one side of me and I could see the CSPAN camera panning to the area I was in. I finally felt like I was in Washington, DC. And then a senator’s phone went off. Not only did the phone go off, but it was answered! To top it all off, after that interruption of casualty, the room was cleared due to a bomb threat.

One of the most exciting times of my internship was when I got to sit in on a Commission briefing on minorities in higher education. The hearing was far from boring, especially since such a contentious issue was under discussion. It was exiting to just be a part of the briefing. One of the Commissioners even asked the interns if we had any questions we wanted to ask. I submitted a few, but not surprisingly none of them made it. I preferred the Commission hearing to the Senate hearing, mostly because I think there was less politics involved. It seemed like the Commissioners, regardless of their own political affiliation, were looking for tangible solutions to the problems at hand, while at the Senate hearing it seemed liked everyone was concerned with confirming that their political ideologies were being implemented.

Overall, I definitely enjoyed my summer internship. I met amazing people who were equally as politically and socially active as I was. I was reassured in my ultimate career path, and I’m certain that I’ll be able to find a place in Washington where it feels like I’m doing substantive work while also making a difference.