Internship with NewMusicShelf.com

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Hello!

My name is Noah White and I am a senior music business major at ISU with a minor in Business Administration. After hearing that an internship is a graduation requirement for the music business major, I will say I was a little nervous that it would be hard to find one in that upcoming semester. However, I was wrong because the opportunities that presented themselves in MUS 175 helped set me up with my internship. 

This spring I completed my internship with ISU Alum Dennis Tobensk and NewMusicShelf.com. As I mentioned above, I heard about this opportunity in my MUS 175 class. After reaching out to Dennis to express interest, he sent me some more information on what the internship actually is and what he hopes that I would accomplish with it. The internship was mainly student-based, which I enjoyed because I knew that I would get out of it what I put into it. After chatting with Dennis, he offered me the opportunity for the internship and I immediately got started.

The first job that he had me do was the recurring one that I went back to throughout the internship, and it was basically the main thing. Dennis had a list of mostly all the colleges in the United States and Canada. Using that list, he wanted me to create a spreadsheet of all of the applied music teachers at those schools and include their contact information. While this did seem like it would be a somewhat daunting task, I enjoyed it because it gave me something to always keep busy working on, as well as become familiar with schools around the country and learn about some of their faculty.

Also at the beginning of the internship, Dennis was about to publish an anthology for NewMusicShelf.com. One thing that he has to do before releasing the anthology and publishing it, is obtain a signed license from each of the composers whose pieces would be in the anthology. My job for this was to complete the licenses for each individual composer, and then contact them to acquire the signed copy. After doing this, Dennis and I had a chat about why he makes the licenses, how he came up with the wording for the documents, and the challenges that could come up with not obtaining the license. 

As I said in the last paragraph, NewMusicShelf.com publishes anthologies of living composer’s music. Dennis will post a call for scores on the website, and from there, composers will submit their works for the particular anthology in question with specific requirements, including a particular naming convention. I was in charge of the email account for NewMusicShelf.com during my internship, so when I would see a submission that didn’t quite go with the requirements I would email the composer back to retrieve the correct copy.

After the deadline for the call for scores passed, Dennis then had me look through all of the pieces that were submitted to once again make sure they followed the specific requirements. After that, Dennis would then send them to the curator to make their picks for the anthology, and then the work would start all over again.

I truly enjoyed getting the opportunity to work with Dennis and NewMusicShelf.com this past semester. Given some of the challenges that were faced along the way with the pandemic, it was amazing to see that composers were still submitting their works and making art during these trying times. Going along with that, another aspect that I enjoyed from this internship was getting the opportunity to learn and communicate with these people in the field who are devoting their lives to their craft. 

This internship gave me so much knowledge of the music industry and even a specific part of the industry that interests me most, and I am truly grateful that I had the opportunity to learn from such an amazing individual like Dennis. I am excited to use this knowledge and make the most out of my upcoming career!

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