Student Success: Macy Blankenship
Music Industry Essentials Graduate. Music Photographer. Aspiring Marketer & Publicist.
Your Ultimate Career Guide Into The Music Industry
Discover your skills and interests to help you determine and achieve your music career goals.
The Ultimate Music Career Guide
Discover your skills and interests to help you determine and achieve your music career goals.
Understanding the Areas of the Music Industry
A quick introduction to the music industry and the careers that run it
Entrepreneurship In The Music Industry with Director of Marketing, Ali Samadpour
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Everyone’s journey through the music industry is different. Ali Samadpour started out as an intern and worked his way up to Director of Marketing at Everybody Knows. While working his main gigs, he managed to launch two companies, Prescient Digital and Modular Merch. Both companies are rooted in the music industry and help artists with things like merch and digital marketing. He’s worked with a variety of artists including J. Balvin, Da Baby, SAINT JHN, MADEINTYO, A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, Wiz Khalifa and many more.
It hasn’t always been easy but Ali worked hard to get to where he is today. He recently hosted a Music Industry Essentials Webinar to talk about his career path and give some useful tips on making it in the industry. He talked about everything from maximizing a marketing budget to building a Spotify account for artist’s music and how digital advertising plays a major role in marketing an artist and his/her music. He also talked about how to network and safely communicate with people during a pandemic. Networking and fostering positive relationships with people is an important part of making it in the music industry.
If you missed the live webinar, you’re in luck. The entire webinar is available for replay in the video box above and some of the presentation slides are posted below. Aside from taking the Music Industry Essentials course, this conversation is a great jumpstart for a successful career in the music industry.
5 Career Quotables From Grammy Nominated Songwriter Madison Love
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Working in the music industry doesn’t happen overnight. It requires hard work, training, and persistence. Grammy nominated Songwriter Madison Love knows all about the grind it takes to break into the music industry. She recently got her big break and even a few Grammy Noms but it didn’t come without all of the hustle that comes with it. Madison is an NYU alum of the Clive Davis Institute. She is also a songwriter from a few pop star faves including Lady Gaga, Ava Max, and Selena Gomez. She recently sat down with Yellowbrick’s Music Industry Essentials course to talk about her journey through school and how she transitioned into a career in the music industry.
Madison loves what she does, and it shows. “The best part of my job, honestly, is being able to connect to millions of people emotionally through your voice and your emotions”, she said. “And it’s kind of a crazy thing when you hear other people screaming the song that you wrote and you’re just thinking, wow, this is so unreal”. She dropped a lot of useful gems during this interview. Bringing a pen and paper to take notes is highly recommended. You can see some of her quotables below.
If a career in the music industry is something you’ve always wanted, let Music Industry Essentials help you take that first step. Visit Yellowbrick.co/music to apply.
1. “I don’t want to share all of my secrets, but I write down a lot of titles and lyrics all the time in this (shows a journal) and I always bring it to every session, so I’m prepared.”
2. “I think that hustle has gotten me where I am today and getting big cuts like the song that I collaborated on for Lady Gaga album that’s coming out. I wouldn’t have been able to be in that room if I didn’t really, really hustle to get there.”
3. “You just say yes to everything. I’ve molded myself over the years to try and lend myself to other styles to get more cuts, because I have songs that have gone on the radio that are Latin, I’m speaking Spanish, a lot of songs I speak in, whatever language you want, I’ll do it.”
4. “You have to be able to mold yourself into whatever situation you want to be, but still being authentic to you and being authentic to what you want to present.”
5. “As a songwriter, you don’t really make that much from streaming.
You’re getting YouTube, you’re getting Apple Music, you’re getting all these other services. But it’s still not as much money as you think. You have to have multiple, multiple hit songs a year to be making a lot of money.”
Yellowbrick Highlights Student Entrepreneurs for National LGBT Month
The Yellowbrick student community is a great place to find budding talent. Our diverse community is a solid blend of students looking to find their place in a career that they love and others who are looking to grow their skillset. Yellowbrick programs are designed to give students the foundation they need to start building towards a career they are passionate about.
In honor of LGBT History Month, we are highlighting the websites and businesses of our LGBTQ student community. We’ve created a space to highlight some of the businesses that were founded by students in our courses. The landing page for these brands can be found here and when you click on the select squares, you can visit the pages and engage in their services. These businesses offer everything from t-shirts to hoodies to recording studios to makeup. This landing page was created to amplify the businesses and services in our Yellowbrick community.
Please take the time to visit the page and take a look at what some of these brands have to offer. There is also a main student businesses page and we will be adding to that list as the year progresses. Be sure to check back in from time to time.
YB Faves: Top 5 Podcasts in Yellowbrick’s Rotation
If podcasting is something you’ve always wanted to get into, today (well, tomorrow) is the perfect time to start. While blogs and digital publications have flourished, podcasts have become a really cool alternative to sharing content. There are so many to choose from and it is easy to get hooked. When going back and forth to work was a thing, podcasts helped make the commute time a little less tedious. You could listen on the walk to the train, on the train, and on the walk to the office at the push of a button.
Podcasts are a great way to tell a story and provide detailed information on a variety of topics. The Yellowbrick student, faculty, and industry expert community is stacked with people who are the voices of quite a few podcasts in rotation. Some of Yellowbrick grads, current students, and university faculty are lending their ideas and conversations to some very popular podcasts. Since International Podcast Day is coming up, September 30th, we took some time to compile a list of our favorites below. Each podcast comes with a description with links on where and how you can access them. All of the episodes featured in this post can be listened to at the bottom of the page.
The Complex Sneaker Podcast co-hosted by Joe La Puma, Brendan Dunne, and Matt Welty engage in heavy sneaker conversation. The trio are no strangers to sneakers nor our audience as they are seen as industry experts in the Sneaker Essentials sneaker course. Their latest episode includes an in-depth convo with Gary Aspden, the adidas OG. He talks about meeting Kanye and what it took to create the Spezial. Aside from this latest episode, they have a solid archive of conversations to choose from. Click here to listen.
Find Your Dream Job podcast by Mac Prichard is a great way to get some solid career advice. If trying to find the job of your dreams is something you have been trying to achieve, this is the podcast for you. This weekly podcast is all about sharing insider hiring info and tips on the job search that could prove to be helpful in any career. His latest episode, How to dine the Side Door at HR features Dana Pratt, the founder of DCP Training and Talent Development. Her company is the go to to help employers with performance consulting, leadership development, and talent management. Click here to listen.
Renaissance Soul podcast hosted by Kelly “K-Fresh” Frazier is the home for all things Detroit hip-hop and music. What launched as a digital hip-hop website back in 2001, is now an audio podcast with the same content just a different output. The pod recently re-launched in August and led with Detroit’s own Dan Charnas, NYU professor and music journalist who is the go-to for all things Detroit/J-Dilla related. To check out the pod and Dan’s episode, click here.
How to Share podcast is a hospitality focused podcast that discusses storytelling, travel, and marketing in the travel industry. Host Amy Draheim is a marketing maven in the hotel industry and presents new and innovative ways to market hotels and travel destinations. Drahiem also owns and creates content for The Traveler’s Journey, which provides blogging tips, trip storytelling, and how to make the most of your IG feed when traveling. She recently sat down with Moniqua Lane to discuss how she started in hospitality, her efforts to create one-of-a-kind guest experiences, and her efforts to keep her property open despite the current vibe of the country. Click here to listen.
Unravel is a weekly podcast operated by Dana Goodin, Jasmine Helm and Joy Davis. The trio create content that is geared towards educating people about the importance of fashion in the history and current culture of the world. One of their goals is to encourage conversation about these topics within their digital platform community. They are women with a plethora of scholarly knowledge and do a great job of presenting it to their audience. Their goals are to, “collaborate with experts, in their field, to expand the conversation, speak beyond the canon of traditional fashion media and history, and be on the “frontline” of solidifying fashion history as a serious subject to study and learn”. Click here to listen.
Yellowbrick Highlights Student Entrepreneurs for Hispanic Heritage Month
The Yellowbrick student community is a great place to find budding talent. Our diverse community is a solid blend of students looking to find their place in a career that they love and others who are looking to grow their skillset. Yellowbrick programs are designed to give students the foundation they need to start building towards a career they are passionate about.
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we are highlighting the websites and businesses of our Latinx student community. We’ve created a space to highlight some of the businesses that were founded by students in our courses. The landing page for these brands can be found here and when you click on the select squares, you can visit the pages and engage in their services. These businesses offer everything from t-shirts to hoodies to recording studios to makeup. This landing page was created to amplify the Hispanic/Lainx businesses and services in our Yellowbrick community.
Please take the time to visit the page and take a look at what some of these brands have to offer. There is also a main student businesses page and we will be adding to that list as the year progresses. Be sure to check back in from time to time.
