Things seem to go very fast here. The people, the lifestyle, the conversations, the time, basically everything except the traffic. Pete and I arrived about a month ago and I’m stuck wondering where the past four weeks went. We decided to drive out here and all in all, the three days on the road went by surprisingly quick. We pulled into the city and in less than an hour of being here, we were greeted by the Los Angeles McNallySmith Alumni along with our fearless leaders Debbie and Charley. We were treated to a great dinner and although it was great to see everyone, what we were really looking forward to was a good nights sleep.
The first week was filled with mixed emotions. It took a bit of adjusting to get a feel for what life was going to be like but it didn’t take long. The 70 degree weather helped. I had a good amount of time before my internship started so I spent the beginning exploring the different areas. The first of which Pete and I decided should be the beach. Within the first week we had visited Santa Monica beach, Venice Beach, and Hermosa Beach, all of which were beautiful but with very different characteristics. After a mix up on the bus our trip to santa monica turned into a ten mile walk but after doing nothing but driving for three days, we could use the excercise.
After the second week of exploring and hanging out, I was more than ready to start my internship. I am working at ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) which is one of the main performing rights organzations in the U.S. It is an organization that was created and is run by it’s members. Their job is to protect the rights of it’s members by licensing and distibuting royalties for the public performance of their songs. I’m in my third week of interning there and am mainly working for two people. One works in the Pop/Rock department dealing with new and existing members. We process new writer and publisher contracts that come through, and monitor the royalties that are paid out to those members. The other works in that same area as well as in the Marketing Department. We help promote events that ASCAP is hosting, as well as advertise about the company itself. My tasks vary on a daily basis. Some common things include searching through an artist’s database of song to make sure all of the songs have been paid out in full so there aren’t royalties buried somewhere that should have been distributed, or helping to put together care packages for bands that play at an ASCAP event. Now we are starting to prepare for the ASCAP Pop Awards as well as the annual “I Create Music” Expo which is a huge songwriting convention that ASCAP hosts every year.
I have to cut it off here, seeing as how we don’t have internet in our apartment so my blogging time is limited to coffee shops and my computer is about to die on me. I’ll have more later.
