Originally written 9/17/7
Ah, yes, the rants are starting. My package ran out last week, and I basically played nice. It’s finally time to roll out what my experience of working at a major label was like. Please keep in mind, these are all my opinions, experiences and thoughts. It’s safe to say (or hope) some of these situations have been resolved. And while some of these might be WEA specific, I am sure they effect every label.
Today’s topic, class, is time management. It’s precious in any job. Especially when you are home based. Pretty much everybody on the field rep and market leader rep level worked from home. (Maybe it’s coincidence we were mostly the ones to get the ax? Hmm, is it too early to start conspiracy theories?) There are great advantages to working from home, I recommend everyone do it. Far less distraction, no travel time, company doesn’t have to pay to rent an office & utilities, etc.
I will star with how a basic week was for me. Of course, this is different for every rep, but this is how I worked it. Up and in front of the computer by 7:15. On a good day, plow through email & music websites till about 10 or so. Be back home generally by 3-4. Again, sit in front of the PC for another hour or so. Day would be wrapped up by 6 or so.
A few years ago, someone who loved spreadsheets got control. And, hence, a huge waste of time vortex started for us. Labels love to rely on numbers. Doesn’t matter how faulty or insignificant they are. And we were landslided with spread sheets, and charts and just too much. Honestly, if I sat down and read every Excel spreadsheet, I would never get a chance to leave the house. All to what? Digest and dissect too much info, at the cost of seeing how accurate it really is? Let’s look at something called “impressions”. Impressions is the estimated number of how many people heard a song. First off, those numbers are estimated. Secondly, that’s just the number of people who heard the song. Doesn’t mean they liked it; doesn’t even mean they heard the damn thing. But, hey, if 45 million people heard s ong, well, damn it, it must be a hit.
We would also get detailed breakdown of spin information. Spins are the numbers of times a station plays a song. A station could play a song over a hundred times. So, on paper, it looks like it is a hit. If you read all these spreadsheets, that would be an easy conclusion to make. But it could be wrong.
Often times, certainly not every time, I would go into one of your stores, tell you all this info, and ask what you felt about the song/artist. You would say “I’m not feeling anything on it.” There can be many explanations for this. It’s not like the promotion (i.e.radio) department isn’t doing their jobs. Often times, there may not be a reason. But the song isn’t connecting; it’s not resulting in sales for your store or my label.
There was too much email. Really, it’s like the higher the person is, the more clueless they are about using the reply all button. Kids, I kid you not, it would not be uncommon to go out for a few hours, come back to find 50-60 emails. Often times these were replies to an original emails. Somewhere during those threads, us field level types would just reply to ourselves, lamenting how this thing got out of control. I had a ton of memory in my email, and often I would get warnings that I was over my limit.
Conference calls. Ugh, a bane of my existence. We would have one “new York” call every other Thursday. This was probably the single biggest waste of time. First of all, every one from NY, Boston, Philly, and DC would be on this. Everyone in NY would sit around a big table, talking into a speaker phone. While I hated these calls, I would often keep myself in check by thing, “It could be worse. I could actually be sitting in that room. I know I wasn’t the only one on Instant Messenger. These calls were very NY centric. Sure, NY is it’s own animal, and a vastly different market than the others. But, man o man, did we waste a lot of time talking about NY. Look, your all in the same room, don’t waste my fucking time when you can just end the call and talk amongst yourselves. It was during these calls that we would all go over the latest new release books. It was during these calls that label ‘regionals’(from WB and Atlantic) would come in and give us the latest info on the releases in the book.
Towards the end, we had the ‘local’ call, which was just the Philly market on their own call, NY on their own, etc. I found these calls incredibly informative. It was just us, usually bitching about what a waste the NY call was. On this call, we shared real information, all the stuff we felt & saw while actually out in the real world. No BS-ing, ny hype, just keeping it real, and talking music. I still miss those calls.
Before the call, I would spend some time with the book. I would highlight what I thought to be the pertinent info. Just like back in college, and I would retain it just about as long. Now, you would look to these regionals to have the latest info, to know their shit, to tell us something we didn’t already know. You would be looking wrong. Often times, I honestly believe said regional would never have opened the damn book before the call. Sometimes, they would just have the pages from their releases, and they wouldn’t be in the order that everyone fucking else had them in. It’s a simple request, really. Don’t waste my time reading the book back to me. Assume I can read, and work a highlighter. Instead, just tell me something that’s not on the page. Tell me of a second single, tell me of a tour, tell me of an advertising campaign, or TV shot. But they couldn’t. It was just them, grossly unprepared, reading the book back to me. I find this rude, discourteous and unprofessional. They wouldn’t tell us all the info we knew. Someone would ask, “Do you know anything about this getting an exclusive with Target?” A brief silence, followed by something like “O, thanks for asking me” or “Thanks, I forgot to bring that up.” That is vital info we need to let our (real) accounts know. It’s not popular, but it shouldn’t be hidden from the sales reps.
It was difficult to make store visits effective. I considered this my bread and butter. It was a treat to get out into the read world, and see if this WEA hype was fact or fiction. After all, I was a marketer, and you can’t learn much about the market behind a phone and PC screen. We would have a list of titles we were to check at accounts. Over they years the list grew to be a beast. They tried to manage it by breaking it down by account (Best Buy had their own, FYE, had their own, etc) It first started out at just a few titles, and at the end, it was probably 20-25 titles per account. I could oftnen have it memorized. And some of the titles made you scratch your head. I remember one time we were checking target for some obscure BS title. None of us could find it. Turns out, Target never even carried it. Who’s supposed to be checking this? The list wasn’t totally uneffective. It did help us ID a few problems, such as Target not carrying titles they’re not supposed to. There were weeks where we could ID a problem and act to correct it. It wasn’t all bad. It just wasn’t managed correctly. There were titles on there that didn’t need to be there.
We were required to post pics of our displays. WEA chose Shutterfly. Shutterfly is a good site to use for occasional posting. But daily posting was a pain. It took 11 clicks to post one picture. I know, I counted.
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