Trevor Weitzel - Universal MPLS

What can I say???  It was a quick and painless week.  I sure do love how record companies fully embrace taking days off for holidays.  I definitely fit in here.  Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

Langen- ASCAP-MInneapolis- 11/23-11/30

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I know I did! Since I was back home I didn't really have much time to do internship stuff Butttt I have a few shows coming up that I plan on attending including:

Crew Of Humans at House Of Bricks in Des Moines, IA (12/10)

A huge music fest at a small coffeeshop in Stuart, IA (12/27)

Tomorrow's Storm at Vaudeville Mews in Des Moines, IA (1/2)

Among many others.

These are ones that I have talked to the bands and they are interested in signing up but would rather talk in person.

Peace

Booking Shows

 This week has been a little slow but it alright.  I'm still booking shows for the Franki Lee and Claw Throat.  I also found this Hip-Hop group that I want to bring to the teams attention should go great! Well thats it for this week.

Finally Back at Work 11/20

It just so happened that the last 2 weeks were times that Patrick had vacation days so I didn't have to go in on my last 2 Thursdays. I asked if he had a nice romantic getaway planned with his fiance but as it turns out, he was just having some buddies in from out of town so that negates the romance. This week back was super busy though. We had to record and edit what felt like a billion spots but in reality it was only like 8. However, that is a ton compared to the usual 1 or 2. We ended up having to put less thought into the loud and local show this week by doing a shuffle mode show where I just grabbed random CDs off the shelf and he played a track from each of them. I loved that it was busy. I wouldn't have as much fun any other way. I'm kinda bummed that I wont be going next week because of stupid Thanksgiving and then the week after Patrick has another Thursday off so thats 2 more weeks I'll be missing out on. That just means that I wont be writing a blog for 2 weeks unless I just post one saying "Hey, I didn't go today" haha! Joke

Vance McCain, Darp Studios, Recording Technology

Im soooooo tired right now. I feel like I been here engineering for a week STRAIGHT!!! Lol I dont really care. I LOVE THIS STUDIO...I dont have too much to say this week because my mind isnt functioning that well. Happy Thanksgiving to you all and see you soon!!!

God Bless,

Vance McCain

Vance McCain, Darp Studios

Evan Gundlach, Music business, Universal, Twin Cities

Everything seemed to really slow down this week. Since there are not a lot of releases this time of year there seems to be a lot less to do compared to this summer when it seemed nothing would ever let’s up. I am still filling in some responsibilities since Tim is gone and I did some advertising work for target this week. On Tuesday I used a system called fastrac to putting in some marketing information for the Transworld account which I had done for target before and it was pretty much the same thing. I also did some updates in the target history reports but Tuesday was a pretty quite day. Friday I updated the album tracking database and helped out with some posters and did a lot of mailings. This upcoming Tuesday is the last big cd releases for universal with, The Killers, Kanye West, and Ludacris’s new albums all coming out. On Friday we actually got all these cds in so I got to listen to a couple of them which was pretty cool. This next week coming up I am only going in on Tuesday because of the holidays, but ill keep updating after that.

Langen- ASCAP-MInneapolis- 11/16-11/23

This week I spent some time going out and talking to bands. 

Friday night my band that I manage played with The Exies and Trust Company. I introduced myself to both of their managers and we had a conversation about ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. Unfortunately, both are already signed up but it was awesome to get some insight from these people. Both managers expressed some complaints about the PROs and how they work but they both agreed that it was a good tool for musicians.

Last night, I was in Storm Lake, IA for Edge'd Out Fest and talked to all of the bands that were there. I got phone number and emails of the bands interested in signing up. One of them was actually looking for someone to help out so hopefully I will be the one to get them signed up.

Thats all for now.

Peace, Langen

Trevor Weitzel - Universal MPLS

As the year comes closer to the end, things seem to be getting more quiet around the office.  This week I stuck to my usual routine of setting goals for upcoming releases, pulling sales numbers, and other random projects for people.

I'm really trying to learn more about Digital and New Media because that is obviously where this industry is headed, and that is where the jobs are going to be at in the future.  McNally really needs to start emphasizing this, and implement it into the curriculum a lot more.

I got to go to the Cities 97 20th Anniversary Party on Wednesday, which was a good time.  I actually got to meet Jason Mraz before the show.  I've met so many big artists this semester, I'm starting to feel spoiled.  The only bad thing about the show was that they took way too long between sets.  I'm talking 30 - 40 minutes.  It was ridiculous!

Rob Peek - Alan Ett Music Group - 11/16/08

Hey guys,

First of all I want to send out my deepest and most sincere thanks to all of the other interns, alumni, and Debbie for the wonderful surprise party for Sonny this weekend. You all have no idea what it meant to me, and how wonderful of a surprise it was.
Thank you all from the bottom of my heart!!

Next, it was the busiest of busy weeks last week. I sat in on a sound design session at Media City Sound. I made a couple of contacts and exchanged business cards with a few people, and I made my way into an industry mixer with some of the top music supervisors in the country.

Sound Design was very interesting. By far the most artistic of the post production duties, the sound designers are responsible for making sure that the music picked out by the music supervisor fits in and works well with the moving images and audio clips that are part of the tv show. The sound designer referred to it as "Surgery" on the audio clips. Cutting and slicing bits and pieces of library music to fit the time frame of the scene, and adjusting the volume at various places to go underneath dialog as well as taking the library music and adding other pieces of music to it in order to make the music really become part of the show!

The Hunnypot Party was the official party to kick off the Billboard Music/Hollywood Reporter convention on Music in Film and Television. Most major supervisors in the U.S. were at least invited to this event, and alot of them showed up.
The most interesting thing about this event, at least to me, was watching the people interact with each other.
This was a party at a club, which meant, live bands and dim lights. What was cool was watching how people did business in this setting. Two salesmen from Alan Ett were here, and they had a strategy. Watching these two guys work was like watching pro sports, each of them knew what the other one was doing, and they were both working for the same common goal.
The Vice President of sales here at Alan Ett was also at the event. She had her spot staked out right by the door so that she could be the first one to talk to people as they came into the club. She also came equipped with her camera and took pictures of herself with people. At first it reminded me of being back at college and taking pictures with people because it was going to go up on their myspace, but then someone told my why she does it; Like I said, this was a club, so dim lights, and very hard to see the faces of the people you are talking to, so she takes pictures of herself with these people, so that she can see who it is she's talking to.

Brilliant!

It was a learning experience for me, and a sort of eye opener as well. This is how business is done out here. It wasn't a party, it was a giant business meeting.

That's all for now.


Thanks again everyone.

Rob

Evan Gundlach, Music Buisness, Universal, Twin Cities

I’ve been so busy I even forgot to post a blog last week. Everything at universal is going very well and they are keeping me pretty busy. I did a lot of work on target databases for advertising and history reports on sales. I am playing catch up since there was a gap for about a month where no one did any work on it so it almost feels like a never ending project, but I am catching up. One of the people on the analysis team is going on a vacation for two weeks, so while he is gone I am taking over a couple of his responsibilities. I am putting in the weekly information for the album tracking database which is very important to keep up to date, because they use it to project weekly cd sales. They also added a new function in the database which I hadn’t seen yet that allows you to look at an artist's first week cd sales and compare it to other albums. I think it’s really interesting looking at this because you can really see how large of a following a group has. This past week I have been doing a lot of analysis and I figure I will be doing the same this week since he will still be gone. On Friday we had our last music meeting of the year which was a bummer, but it is a slower time of the year and there are not a lot of releases. Well I’m out but, I’ll be sure not to forget to update you next week.

Josh Woodard- Pangaea Entertainment Group

Hey everybody I'm sorry I missed you all last week. I do have a lot to tell you all about the last two weeks though. I got to have a little bit of fun before everybody got back from london. My mother came to visit me and we went on a tour of LA seeing all the sights, we also went to a taping of The Price is Right which you can watch on Jan 12(look for me in the front row!), and we even conquered Space Mountain at Disneyland! Just proving that if you have the time to explore LA you can find an endless amount of fun things to do. But by wednesday everybody had landed back in the states and it was back to business as usual. I stayed pretty busy for the rest of the week getting things reorganized, and helping out with some computer software updates.

This last week I stayed busy with a couple large mailers that we did for some of our artist development campaigns. I also did research for the hush hush ATTACK! newsletter, and did a lot of work with the hhA! myspace. I also got to learn how to track radio airplay. We used these two industry websites to track every single spin an artist that we are doing a campaign for got in the last week. We then recorded the spins into an excel to show our artists what we've been able to achieve for them with our mailers. It was pretty sweet to see artists who's cd's I had mailed out getting airplay on radio stations across the country. This Weekend was also pretty awesome we had a McNally Gathering/Birthday party of sorts at our apartment on sat, which was loads of fun to see lots of awesome people that I haven't seen in forever, and see what's new and going on with everybody else. Today me and Monte from work went on an awesome OC adventure, we hit up Laguna beach, and Newport beach which are just as glamorous as the t.v. shows portray them to be. We drove onto this ferry and went to Balboa beach, then off to Huntington beach where we got to watch some crazy surf sets. We ended our sweet journey in Long Beach, where Monte showed me the different neighborhoods that Sublime, Snoop Dog, and Warren G were all from, which was pretty epic. It was the perfect end to a great week, and I can't wait to do it all again tomorrow.

Take care everybody
Josh

Trevor Weitzel - Universal MPLS

Things have been going great here at Universal as of late.  I am really getting comfortable and confident in everything that I'm doing.  It's nice to know that I am making a difference and that people respect and appreciate my work that I do on a day-to-day basis.  I feel like I have a lot of freedom to do whatever I feel is necessary throughout the course of my days.  I'm not stuck doing the same things over and over again which is really nice.  I get to bounce around a bit and do different tasks for different departments throughout the office.  It really keeps me on my toes and keeps things interesting.

I have actually had quite a bit of time to myself this last week to focus more I things I need to do.  I started putting together a portfolio of all my work that I've done at this internship, as well as work I have done at school, to use in the future for job interviews.  I'm really proud of how it's coming along, and hopefully it'll help me out here in the next few months as I start to apply for jobs.

Other than that, I don't know much else.  I had the pleasure of catching some really great shows the last couple of weeks.  Kings of Leon absolutely killed it at the Orpheum on the 4th.  That was the most amazing show I think I've ever been to.  I also saw Coldplay on Friday.  Our seats were so ridiculous.  There was one point where they were basically playing right in front of us.  I could almost reach out and touch them.  It was crazy and definitely another great show.

Langen- ASCAP-MInneapolis- 11/9- 11/16

This week was full of more of the same.

Still just trying to convince bands to join ASCAP.

Many don't want to because they aren't ready to commit to a contract which is definitely a good reason.

I thought it was interesting that at my other internship at Innova (a huge label based out of St. Paul) kept on bashing ASCAP because of their prices. I wanted to speak up and say that ASCAP is nothing but good and will only help but they brought up many good points about how much ASCAP charges venues and what not.

Also, while on a field trip with tour management we went to The Acadia Cafe where the owner told us that he doesn't let anyone play any cover songs because he can't afford to pay ASCAP or any other PRO. I think that it kind of stinks how much it costs to be a member if you are a venue but at the same time I think organizations like ASCAP really do help out when it comes to getting your money for your music.

I thought it was weird how many times it came up in this one week.

More bands should be signed up next week!

Peace,

Langen

Andy Frost | Wooddale Church | 11/09-11/15

On Wednesday it turned into project day real fast. With the new campus being added, all the wireless mics need to be configured the same for both campuses. This is becuase the pastor travels between campuses on Sundays to speak and uses that same wireless pack. So that was 8 wireless receivers and mics at each of the 3 FOH locations that needed to be changed. It got a little confusing for a while there. The new Edina campus has been open now for two Sundays, including this morning. It's been going pretty well so far. We then went over to the Edina Campus to get some things set up for the following weeks. Pretty much like TV/DVD carts for some rooms. I might have the opportunity to start running sound at the new campus which would be a large promotion from what i'm doing now so we'll see...

On Friday I came in for the morning to run sound for a funeral. It was only a podium mic and a soloist with piano so pretty easy to manage. That was about it for this week. More to come in following weeks...

Andy Frost
Wooddale Church

Booking Show for Franki Lee and Clawthroat

Well this week has been kind of busy booking shows for both Franki Lee and Clawthroat.  I also had to figure out how to get Clawthroat into to some out of state festivals which way really fun trying to track down all of the information.  I've noticed while doing this that there isn't one thing in the world that you can find on myspace or one company that don't have one lol.  well thats it for the week

Aaron Chesling-UMGD

Hello Everybody,

This week at Universal Music Group I was quite busy. First I started with some good old fashioned data entry for some sound scan weekly sales on their excel files on the shared drive they use. After that I did some work on Pollstar material, I searched for all the groups playing soon and basically sorted them for Carolyn McKay. Both jobs were pretty big so they kind of took up most of my time, but after that I had just enough time to finish some radio grids for Sara Hartley with Fontana Records.
I am ready for what they have in store for me next time, I think that I'm gonna be learning some more stuff soon. That is all I got for now.

JEL Entertainment

Well this week we have played a tour out east for Franki Lee and Claw Throat.  Should be something exciting for both performers.  Setting up this tour gas been great a nd i like that i get to talk directly to the clients instead of through other people, it gives me the impact of the business. So far so good.

Vance McCain, Darp Studios

Hello everyone...These last few weeks been craaaaazzzyyyy. I been blessed to engineer for one of the Artist here at the studio. We been working like everyday for about 16 hours. Its been an experience because I have been introduced to so many people that can play a big role in my future. So other than that, I have nothing more to say but God Bless and someone make a snow angel for me ha!!!

Langen- ASCAP-MInneapolis- 11/2- 11/9

It's becoming hard to find bands to work with. Many bands are interested but then don't follow through on anything.

Some bands feel that it isn't necessary for them to sign up right now, which is probably true for some, but it's hard convincing some this is a benefit.

Della Gleason is all signed up as both a writer and publisher and Sleep Is The Enemy's singer Dave Pickerign is signed up as a publisher and we are working on the writer application.

Also, This Last Dance is signing up on their own time but I'm pushing them to do it soon.

If anyone knows of any bands that would like to get signed up let me know!

Peace.

Langen

Antonio Rosario - Week 8 - North Star Media

Another week, another blog...
So last week, week 7, I got approached by a film director to design their myspace page for a little money. It was a nice part time gig, and it feels good to make some California income. I was also designing a landing page for Noises 10 via North Star Media - the placement didn't make it, but the layout is still up there. You can check out the rough draft of what it was going to look like at: http://www.orikal.com/noises10


This week, week 8, I did some more royalty statements, spreadsheet work, copying license agreements, etc. the usual. One cool thing about this week though was when Ron Sobel took about 45 minutes and told me about how he discovered Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam (if you're lucky enough to be my facebook friend, you've been seeing me post the pictures of the platinum plaques.) He also helped connect me with someone back in St. Paul for some potential work when I return.

hope the snow is treatin' you all good back in Minnesnowta. I'll be there to enjoy the driving conditions and shoveling duties soon enough :-)

Positivity,
-Antonio Rosario

Aaron Chesling-UMGD

Hello Everybody

Well this week has been just about as fun as it it gets. First of all I started my week with about 3 hours of PIM, after completing about 50 of those was running around like a lost puppy (always an awkward feeling). Both of the individuals I work with were headed out early to vote, so I had to find something to do, so went around to all the labels asking for work. I was thinking of getting up and doing something constructive, so I was asked to do some packaging of some signed merchandise, in this instance it was a bar stool signed by NKOTB (New Kids On The Block). IT was kinda big so I had to pretty much build a box that would fit it safely without bending the steal or scratch off their signatures. I had to tape some a couple boxes together, wait it gets better, I then reinforced the inside and outside and filled it with packing papers and bubble wrap. After that I was pretty much set so I handled the front desk for a bit and I was off. On the way home I listened to the new Hinder album that I received from Universal Republic, I'm not sure what I think of it but for now that's all I got.

Andy Frost | Wooddale Church | 10/26 - 11/01

This week we went to the new campus of Wooddale in Edina to get all the band gear setup and sound checked to be prepared for the first rehearsal. We had to unpack all the stuff like cables, DIs, mics... Then we laid out the stage with the band gear. We got the drumset all miced, the bass setup with a Sansamp, the guitarist setup with a POD X3 Live, the piano miced, the synth setup with a Yamaha S90, and all the vocal mics. We got the HearBack system working, it's an in-ear monitor system to eliminate stage noise. It sends seperate channels of each instrument of the band and lets you mix it yourslef. The vocalists a pair of stage monitors, L-Acoustics 8XT's, they are an amazing sounding box. We had a couple musicians there so we got levels set on most of the instruments and got a feel for how it will sound. Pretty good. We then checked the audio coming from the video souce. The video station has the audio from the computer, DVCAM and DVD all summed with a small mixer and sends just one line to the FOH console. That was pretty much it for this week.

Andy Frost
Wooddale Church

Rob Peek - Alan Ett Music Group - 11/3/08

Not much to talk about this week.

Most of my time was spent on a project that consisted of linking composer and lyricist information to songs in the Opus 1 music library database.

I got to see a very cool show at the Canyon Club on Saturday. A Pink Floyd tribute band played The Wall in its entirety. They were very good! The music was right on, and the over all band performance was amazing!

That's about all. This week should bring something good!

Marthe Mekuria at EMI/Capitol

Today is my first day 'independently' at work. The person who's position I've taken and who trained me is back in Chicago, and I won't be able to ask him anymore questions!

Over the course of three days training with him, I have filled up an entire note book full of notes. All for me to learn and do. You could say I'm not bored anymore.

I'm a sales assistant to a few great new mentors, I do a lot of data base research and work directly with the RIAA to make sure tour managers report their album sales on the road (so artists can get nominated for awards). I also need to make sure they receive their product accurately and on time on road, and create accounts for them to a have products shipped. I'm responsible for making sure new release marketing books are accurate and delivered on time, this all is a two week process.

All by all, a bunch of computer researching, faxing, and constant back and forth communication with different record labels/groups.

What I've been up to

To be honest, I've been so busy with work, interning and playing music that I just never even got around to realizing that we had to do posts! I know that sound stupid but, it would be nice if it didn't cost so much to take intern credits, or if I was getting paid from MJG Production... where I'm interning... but its never that easy. So time is short and work is long! However, I've been learning a ton from MJG. MJG is a company that books and promotes local and even some national acts. Over the summer I helped work festivals like Log Jam and 10K Lakes. Just recently, we signed a managing contract with The Breakfast out of New York! When I first started interning my boss Mark had me answering phones and making business calls for him. This was a great way to break me into the industry and introduce me to the people we would be working with. I was also doing a lot of mailing of bills, checks, and promo. More recently I've been focusing more on promotions and venue research. To be honest this is my true passion. I would love to someday plot and plan tours for bands. I love venues! Anyways, all last week and this week I will be doing alot of ground work promoting our November shows at Trocaderos, The Cabooze, The Downtime. I usually start in Dinky Town and then I head to Uptown. On Wed, Ill go to Downtown and then through St. Paul. Then last but never least Ill hit the west suburbs because that's where I live.

~Mikel Wright
MJG PRODUCTIONS

Evan Gundlach, Music Business, Universal, Twin Cities

This was probably my shortest week at universal. I didn’t go in on Tuesday because I wasn’t feeling good. It was actually a really a bad day to not be there because some really important people in the company came out for a visit to the branch. I went out of town this weekend so I ended up going in early on Friday so I could leave town a little earlier. I have always really liked how understanding everyone is at universal and it just makes going there that much more enjoyable. While I was there on Friday I got nearly caught up on the target history reports. These are data spread sheets that target uses to look at the market share they have on CD sales. It is actually pretty cool to see what genres of music sell the most at target stores. I’m feeling a lot better this week so I'm sure ill have another good week.

Langen- ASCAP-MInneapolis- 10/26-11/2

Finally! I found out who my mentor is! And I got my first band signed up! 

I got Sleep Is The Enemy singer, Dave Pickerign, signed up as a publisher and later tonight I should have him signed up as a writer as well.

I'm also meeting with many bands this week including:

The Dizzies

This Last Dance

Della Gleason

The Track Record

Asher

Third Supply

Black Days Down

I'm so excited that this internship is finally going somewhere.

I'm actually liking it and it feels like I've only had it for a week.

Thanks to Sarah Peterson in the career center for helping me get everything sorted out and not giving up!

My Frist Blog

My time here at JEL Entertainment is going pretty good.  I like the responsibility I'm getting so far it feels great!  So this past weekend I went out to promote Clawthroat and greatness of them making it to the final stage for, "Battle of the Bands," and I admit it felt good to say i was doing this.  I've also set up shows for Stacy K and her group and this is also coming along great.  Well thats all for now, lets see what happens next week!!!