Jared Berger ’21

The Music Playground, New York, NY

This summer, I had the pleasure of working at The Music Playground, a music production, sync licensing, and music-placement company. Co-founded by Eric Kaye ’92, The Music Playground collaborates with bands, artists, and composers to license and place music in advertisements, films, and television shows. This was my second time interning at the company—I had previously worked at The Music Playground as part of the Winter Study Program, and I was very excited to return for the summer and take on bigger projects and more responsibilities.

While I was technically an intern for The Music Playground, the company is part of a larger suite of affiliated music and advertising companies with the same CEO and a shared SoHo office. This means that while my regular work was directly for The Music Playground, I was frequently asked to complete projects for the other companies in the office as well. Within my first week as a summer intern, I was asked to meet with the CEO, Drew Stein, about a project for AuDigent, a company that helps brands effectively target specific audiences through programmatic advertising. After meeting with Drew and learning about his strategy for pitching the company to potential investors, my task was to research the state of the music industry—to find statistics, graphs, and quotes that could help strengthen his pitch—and summarize my findings into a concise document that I then submitted directly to Drew. Through this assignment, in addition to gaining important experience adapting my research skills cultivated at Williams to a workplace environment, I learned about what it takes to pitch a company to potential investors and why this process is so important.

When not busy doing assignments for the other companies in the office, my daily work involved updating, maintaining, and researching The Music Playground’s original music library, The Diner. Through this work, I was able to learn about all of the steps that go on behind the scenes in order for a copyrighted piece of music to appear in a video, whether that is on TV, in a movie, or in an online advertisement. Some assignments I worked on throughout the summer were metadata tagging of incoming tracks, creating custom playlists and performing music searches for clients, and researching online uses of company tracks to identify potential infringements. This work was exciting and rewarding not only because I got to listen to and write about music all day, but also because I knew my work was helping to support musicians and composers.

Many people at The Music Playground are musicians themselves, and this naturally creates a workplace environment in which it feels like everyone is a music-lover. This manifested itself in small ways throughout the summer, but frequent conversations about Spotify playlists or concerts going on in the city helped me form connections with coworkers and kept the office atmosphere fun and exciting. Additionally, I saw firsthand how this type of environment leads to a company culture in which supporting music and musicians is at the heart of everything that goes on in the office. When introducing me to new assignments, Licensing Coordinator Colleen Dahlstrom always took the time to explain why the work I would be doing was important and how it would benefit artists and composers. For example, I learned that researching potential infringements is so important because it prevents artists’ music from being used without the artists themselves being paid for their work. I also learned that in today’s world of music streaming, artists are generally receiving less and less compensation for their recorded music. By acting as a liaison between artists, advertising agencies, and video production teams, The Music Playground is helping artists find new sources of revenue and adapt to the technology-driven evolution of the music industry. Working at The Music Playground allowed me to see a more general picture of the music industry, one that is constantly changing and evolving due to the new ways in which people are consuming music.

My experience at The Music Playground has shown me that a career in the music industry is something I could see myself pursuing in the future. At Williams, I have spent a lot of time worrying about eventually making a decision between pursuing music and pursing something else. My experience this summer has shown me that this is not necessarily a decision I have to make between one option and the other. Working at The Music Playground gave me an opportunity to combine my passion for music with my other skills and showed me how I could still be involved in the music industry even without primarily performing or composing myself. I believe the broad range of courses I have taken at Williams, in addition to my experience taking music courses and playing in ensembles at school, prepared me perfectly for my internship, and my experience this summer has inspired me to continue taking a deliberately broad range of classes. Additionally, I had the opportunity to speak with Eric Kaye throughout the summer about his own experience at Williams. A former consultant who left that field to start a music company, Eric reiterated the importance of getting a broad education and intentionally taking classes in a variety of subject areas. He also shared that his favorite courses at Williams were all tutorials. While I am still planning on completing a major in Computer Science, I am eager to continue exploring new subjects, and I am looking forward to taking my first tutorial this fall—a philosophy course about critical theory!

The front desk, where I spent time working with the Studio Manager.

I would like to thank Dawn Dellea and the ’68 Center for Career Exploration for connecting me to Eric Kaye and for supporting me throughout both my Winter Study SPEC 21 Internship and my summer Alumni Sponsored Internship. Additionally, I would like to thank my alumni sponsors, Ms. Martha Williamson ’77 and Mr. Peter Martin Nelson ’76, for their generous support of this program. Because of the hard work of the ’68 Center staff and the generosity of alumni like Ms. Williamson and Mr. Nelson, I was able to have a tremendous summer seeing the music industry for myself. Through this program I learned that working in the music industry is not just an abstract idea in my head, but instead something I have already had the chance to live and experience on a daily basis. I would also like to thank Eric Kaye, Colleen Dahlstrom, and everyone at The Music Playground for giving me the opportunity to learn about what they do, for answering all my questions, and for making me feel so welcome during my internship. I am so grateful to have had this experience and to all those who helped make my summer internship possible, and I am eager to head back to Williamstown to start my junior year!