The Interview, Part 1

Today I came in a little early to get the office set up for my meeting with Tyrone.  David has meetings in the city, so it worked out perfectly (the phone didn't ring as often as it usually does, yay).  I wasn't able to get ahold of Marley Marl after calling him last week and yesterday, but Tyrone provided such great insight into the history of the label.  I prepared some specific questions, but more or less, I left it pretty open ended for him to answer.  

The interview ended up taking three hours, and we STILL weren't done.  He talked about his background, which he started in radio and then progressed into music and management from there.  Currently, he is involved with the Brooklyn Steppers, a non-profit marching band organization for underprivileged kids in the Brooklyn area.  After he got out of music and radio, he came back to his neighborhood where he saw his nephew and his friends meeting up after school with duct-taped band instruments, playing by ear.  He realized the need for a structured, after-school program that got the at-risk kids off the streets during the prime time of crime, which now has evolved into a band with over 200 (either 200 or 2000) kids participating.  From 3:30 - 8:00pm daily, the kids are at the program.  The first part of the time they get tutoring, then dinner, then band practice, with performances on the weekend.  He gives them financial incentives based on grades, and this money is put aside for them to use toward college.  The Brooklyn Steppers have performed on Jay Leno and at the 2009 Presidential inaugural parade, traveled abroad to Bermuda and other locations, among other achievements.  

What I like about the program is that Tyrone found a way to introduce music into these kids' lives whereas they would have lacked it in school.  Another positive outcome is that the program has had a direct impact on the amount of crime in the area (Bedstuy) - when the program started, it was averaging somewhere over 150 murders a year, and now, it's down to 17 this year!  That's a huge difference, if you ask me. 

upcoming interview!

Today I made preparations for tomorrow's interview - I got with David and made arrangements to leave work early to pick up a tripod for the video camera.  Spent the day working on research for the blog some more, and did some research on companies in the area.

Thanksgiving week!

Today is my last day before I take off for Virginia for the break.  I spent the day doing some more research for the blog and making a list of the things I need to do before my meeting with Tyrone next week.  I also worked brainstorming for my cover letter and resume some more so that David will have it to send out to his contacts.

Blogging is my life

So these blogs (this one and the Cold Chillin' one) are definitely making me work on my writing.  I read up on how to increase traffic to the blogs today, and I'm going to start implementing some of the strategies.

Xuchitl from the career center called me today as well.  I had sent her my resume earlier this week and she's working with me to "clean it up" - content is all there, but just how it's set up and making it less cluttered.  It's even more important now to have this ready now that I'm making contacts up here and going to meetings soon.

Otherwise, today was devoted to the blog as well and doing write ups for that.

BING - light comes on

So I realized on the way to work today that it would be awesome to have BOTH Marley and Tyrone at the meeting, so they could bounce stories off each other and that sort of deal, so I sent Marley an email and text letting him know of the meeting.  

Just spent the good part of today typing up a little of what Tyrone gave me and finding videos on youtube to add to it.  I'm trying to go artist by artist, and pull in the influential songs that are still relevant today.

Success!

YES!  I finally got ahold of Tyrone and was able to talk with him a little about the early history of the label.  It was helpful to get an idea of how the label really came about and the early artists signed to it.  We decided it was easier to schedule a meeting in person where he could sit down and tell me stories of the time and I could ask whatever questions I wanted to - it is scheduled for the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and will be at our office. 

David also put in a call to his former intern at Sony Music Publishing, Kenny Ochoa, and sent me his contact information in order to set up a meeting with him.  I'll be talking with him about opportunities in the music industry and such, and hopefully some job leads might come of it.  He's also going to talk to his friends Joel Simon and Ali Dee - of the commercial and film music production people I spoke about before.  So, we'll see what happens! 

Changing Music Industry

I came in this morning and talked with David a little on the music industry.  I asked him where he thought the opportunities laid, given the way the industry is now, and he thinks it lies in finding a great musical act and owning the rights to their music - so essentially, in publishing.  One of the quotes he said was that "even turkeys fly in a strong wind," - so when the music industry was doing well, businesses that don't really do anything still make money.  However, today, the music business isn't doing the greatest, so a "turkey" won't "fly."  

I also asked him what he thought about entertainment law and Intellectual Property rights, as a friend of mine indicated that there is future growth in this area.  He predicts that it's about the same as the rest of the industry.  It will probably be another decade or so before the music industry picks up again, and that's if legislation is passed giving labels the right to crack down further on illegal downloads (by shutting down the cable's access to those sites, etc.).  We'll see.

As much as this was a difficult thing to hear, it was good because it's the reality of the business. 

David had presentations in the city today, so I worked from home on the youtube videos and tried calling Tyrone again.  I also did some research on networking in order to prepare myself for the speaker tomorrow night.

Youtube

David said we would start pulling in different sources, links, and data from different places for the blog, so I've started finding high-res videos for the Cold Chillin' blog.  Called Tyrone again today, but I caught him at a bad time.  He said he would return my call, but has not yet.  I'm going to attempt to call him again on Monday.

My landlady gave me an article about a music industry lecture that's coming up on Tuesday.  The guy speaking is Morton Dennis Wax, who is a noted NYC music marketer.  I'm going to go to it to ask questions, gain insight, and to network some.  Kind of nervous, but kind of excited!

Happy Friday!

Today was a bit of a bust at the office because we had kids running around all day for Myachi.  Since it was Veterans' Day, the schools had off, so we had an "event."  The location is open to kids at any time, but since there was no school, there were kids EVERYWHERE.  I tried to concentrate on my work, but it was hard to with kids running around.  Continued with the blog and waiting on Tyrone to return my call.  We got an email from Tunesat saying that the data was uploaded so they'll start monitoring the songs and we'll go from there!

I asked David how CAK got involved with Cold Chillin', and he said that one of Charles' people knew of Cold Chillin' and made the introduction, and here we are today.  I called Tyrone and left a message, so I'm just waiting to hear back from him.  Today I continued with my research and uploading to the blog - there's not much besides the bios on there yet, but I need to find a way to get more attention to the blog.

Ali Dee is another one of David's contacts - Ali Dee is the biggest producer for films.  He's done the Alvin & the Chipmunks movies as well as many other popular films.  Apparently he used to be a singer back in the day, and would help aspiring stars by producing their music.  He worked from there and caught his big break eventually and now here he is.  He specializes in custom music productions - so if a film needs a cross between songs or genres, he can create a unique sound for them. 

Michael Tolcher, one of the artists whose music we manage, is playing tonight at The Bitter End in Greenwich.  David will be going with his family to see him, as it's been a couple of years.  I have prior commitments so I can't make it but it's cool to hear of an artist coming to play.  His music is a cross between Jack Johnson & Jason Mraz - check him out!

Cold Chillin' Blog continued

Today I continued with the blog and just added stuff to it throughout the day.  I took some more materials home with me to review and also reviewed one of the Myachi agreements that David was working on - to let me see what their current projects are and such.  What's nice about this blog is I can upload information on a particular artist and then do some research on them for my own personal benefit as well.  David was speaking with Marley Marl, the "it" producer on the Cold Chillin' label, and so he let him know what I was working on and put me in touch with him.  I spoke with Marley briefly, but he gave me some ideas on what I should include in the blog, including the importance of this song catalog with hip hop today.  He's another resource to add to this blog list.

A little on Marley Marl: he was the first to introduce sampling into the hip hop scene, which has developed into an important part of both hip hop and mainstream music today.  Partnering with Cold Chillin' Records, Marley produced some of the foremost in hip hop names, including Roxanne Shante, Biz Markie, and Big Daddy Kane (during the Golden Age of hip hop).  Marley still produces music today, and released collaborative album with Craig G in 2008.

Cold Chillin' Blog

So today I really got to work typing up the press releases for the Cold Chillin' Records blog.  Previously I went through some of the marketing materials to familiarize myself with them, but now I'm getting down to work.  There was a main release about how the label came about, and then individual releases on the different artists.  I'm getting in touch with Tyrone Williams this week.  Tyrone is one of the founders of the label, and will be an asset to me in gathering information on the history of the label and it's importance in the industry.

David asked me to take him to the train station today since he had a meeting in the city with Charles with one of their big name clients.  The afternoon was free for me to work on my projects and also to continue with the Cold Chillin' music blog.

Sent the jumpdrive off to Tunesat today, and they're in the city so they'll receive it fairly quickly.  Today I spent working on my projects for Mr. Butcher's midterm checkpoint by doing some more reading from the music business text, researching online, and talking to David about different careers that are available to me.  He's working with me on my cover letter to direct it toward artist management, because that seems like the direction I want to go at this point.

Spent the day uploading to the FTP again - depending on the size of the file, it would take between 20-45 minutes PER upload.  It looked like the FTP wasn't holding the files, so I had to call Lara again to troubleshoot, she said she'd get back to me about it.  When I spoke to David about it later, he said we'd better just go with a jumpdrive (just under 8Gs of data).  I picked up a jumpdrive on my way home and we're going to send it out tomorrow.  FINALLY!

Tunesat CDs continued

Today I continued to work on the Tunesat CDs, since there are quite a few albums (totaling close to 300 songs) to send to them.  We wanted to send them off yesterday but it was taking longer than we anticipated.  When I emailed Lara from the company for the address, she suggested that I try the FTP (online file transfer) because they only accepted data discs and harddrives (which I thought I was making...).  So, instead of burning CDs, I spent the day uploading to FTP.

Over the weekend I worked on the tunsat data sheet, because I needed to include the file path code for each of the songs - so I had them divided up into separate album folders, and each cell would correspond to the the song title - like this:

MusicA/My Fav Band/My Fav Album/My Fav Song 30.wav

so that would correspond to:

CAK Tunesat/Biz Markie/Biz's Baddest Beats + Videos/07 Biz Is Goin' Off.wav

Today was spent working on burning CDs to send the songs to Tunesat.