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What'$ Your Worth? Continued
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fear described by Max is far from an educational environment. Being ignored until someone feels the need to ridicule you is probably the least educational experience possible. Beyond the general stressful environment, the tasks that Max was asked to perform were questionable at best. These included running personal errands for Daniel Glass such as buying pizza for his 15 year-old son, wrapping and delivering Christmas gifts and picking out an anniversary card for his wife. This is obviously not educational in the slightest, and are actually tasks Glass should be paying a personal assistant to do. One of the other extremely questionable aspects of the unpaid internship positions at big labels is how they get around number four on the Department of Labor’s list, which states “The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern.” As we have already seen, Max was performing many tasks that had nothing to do with the music business, but even when she was doing real work how could she not be providing her employer with “immediate advantage?” It seems that at places like Glassnote they get around this rule by simply taking credit for their interns’ work. “We signed a new roster artist,” Max recalled. “I was told to create the album art for the score. I created three or four options and sent them to the creative director. A day later the artist himself came in and the creative director pulled him aside and said ‘look at all these album art options I created for you.’ She took credit for my work right in front of me. To this day I have not received any credit, or any compensation, for that artwork.” Not only is this simply immoral, but it is potentially illegal. The creative director took credit for work she did not do, never compensated Max for her work and blatantly violated the Department of Labor’s rules for unpaid internships. Music is a hard place for women. I personally have been jeered at while working at music venues and underestimated by many men in the field, but I am lucky to have a very supportive company behind me that has always taken my safety and comfort into account at work. It therefore came as a personal blow to me when Max said that after bringing a cup of tea to Glass he “called [her] fat (in a roundabout manner) and made comments about [her] body” in front of an important music executive. This can be called nothing less than sexual harassment, and it is indicative of a culture that treats women
as objects rather than hardworking professionals. It’s unprofessional, immoral, cowardly and grounds for interns never to be provided to Glassnote again. Clearly Max’s experience at Glassnote and Sam’s experience with the application process shows the massive potential for music internships to go wrong, but there are circumstances in which they can be extremely beneficial. After graduating high school, I took a position at the 9:30 Club in Washington D.C. I worked two days a week in their marketing office where I learned the ins and outs of local marketing strategies. My bosses were approachable, constantly giving me feedback and thanking me for the work I did. Less than three months after I started as an intern I was offered an additional paid position in the box office, where I still work two and a half years later. I consider my coworkers at the 9:30 Club to be my family, and it’s all thanks to my initial unpaid position there. Another student, Alicia Hoole, had a similarly positive experience when she interned at the Boston based label Topshelf. Although the internship did not lead to immediate employment, Alicia said she “would recommend it to anyone who really has a passion for the industry...even the more mundane tasks can be exciting when you think about the legacy you're contributing to.” This article was not written to be a call to arms against unpaid internships, but I do hope it starts a conversation about them. We all have to be more critical of the internship market. Universities that boast of their experience-based learning opportunities need to be more vigilant about the companies their students are contributing to, and advocate for pay when it is appropriate. Finally, I want to emphasize that there is no correct way to get into the music business. Music should be a labor of love, and the great thing about it is that there are an unlimited number of ways to be involved. You could take an internship, or you could start a band, or manage your friend’s bands, or learn to how to do production or security work. You can make it your full time job, or you can keep it as more of a hobby. Never let anyone tell you there is only one path to, or definition of, success; your passion should not be exploited, it should be on your terms and above all else it should make you happy.
By Helen Hennessey (Political Science) Spring 2017
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