two days!!

WHOOOOPS

last night I got in a little late, and I had to go straight to bed, and I didn't get a chance to write out a blog and let you all know what I had been doing!

well!

Yesterday was a cool day, I didn't do an awful lot but, it was still cool! I started the day off down in Columbia records putting CD's into CD cases. Each CD was numbered so that it had its own identity so that should the content be leaked onto the internet, Columbia would be able to work out who it was. (I'm not sure if that just made sense? oh well....) This meant I had to keep the CD's in a specific order and file them so that it was clear where each CD was. The CD's were the new Groove Armarda Album. :-)

After lunch I was back upstairs in my department, the commercial division. The woman who miiiite be representing the UK in the Eurovision song contest was in doing an interview and once she was done with that it was my job to type it up and then send it to the BBC. Before I sent it to the BBC I had to get it checked over with her manager, and then in fact, Rachel (nice woman) sent it to the BBC for me :-)

The job after this was pretty fun. It was to come up with a new name for a new signing who had an existing name that was not so good....haha. (like i'm the person to ask to for good band names, my band are called dan.ed.will -what a name!) Anyway, I was told VERY LITTLE information about this band/group/artist! But from what I was told, I went away and researched all sorts of things linked with them. I learned quite a bit!! Wikipedia is such a great website! Did you no that the band The Coors have sold over 65 million albums worldwide!!!!!!! I think thats insane...

So anyway, I brainstormed all sorts of ideas and stuff and then went into a meeting and discussed my thoughts with the managers. I think they were impressed with some of the things I said which was pretty cool. I then got to hear a few songs by the artist and found out a few more vital facts about them. After this I went back and researched even more for a while before heading home. But then just before I left Scotty P rang me and was like "come to the cinema..." So I was like, "ok" So I stayed on the train until it reached Ashford, and then I got off and met up with Dom at the bus stop :-) Shortly after this Scotty P picked us up and we went to his house quickly before heading to the cinema, by this time Jack and Lewis had also joined us. We went and saw the film "Hot Fuzz" It was good, it was really really funny, but.. the story line was terrible, and it really started to drag out towards the end and this kinda ruined the whole film for me.

Oh yeh, and before I got the train from Waterloo East to Ashford I met up with the awesome Jess for a quick drink! I had a chocolate frappucino (no idea how you spell that) with cream on the top with chocolate cream and chocolate sprinkles and a massive cookie, and she had a cup of tea. It was nice :-)

So yeah, after I got in at 12.45 that night. COOOL!

Oh yeah, and can I also add that on the train yesterday I got up to LEVEL 15!!!!!! on Tetris on my phone. There is a total of 15 levels and I only needed to get 32 more lines and I would have completed the game!!!

Anyway today! There wasn't an awful lot to do!

Got in normal time, said hello to everyone etc.. sat at my desk. Chuck then asked me to resize some photos of Ben Mills and put them into a new folder. So I did that! Then after this Rachel asked me to do some photocopying of some photos and to play around with the settings so that they looked best. So yea, I set off to the photocopy place and did that! Then I sent the photocopies off to where they were going. I spent a while looking for a stiff A4 envelope, but I had to settle with a cardboard envelope that is usually used for posting vinyl. It will have done the job! That should be arriving in Bath at 9am tomorrow morning.

Then I came up and did a bit more work on coming up for a name for the new signing. I also had to ring up this person and ask her if it would be possible to get a birthday cake in the shape of either a guitar or a piano for Ben Mills to be presented with tomorrow morning on GM:TV. In my lunch break I had to head into town and find Clintons and find a suitable birthday card for him aswell!

I came back after lunch and did more research on finding a relevant name to call this new artist/group. I haven't come up with anything! Only a lot of good possible ideas that could develop into names.

The last thing I did today was work down on floor 3 with a really nice woman called Louise. Her job is to sort out new media. (e.g. ring tones, call tones, wall papers) She had a lot to do, and luckily, I saved the day! She needed to send out lots and lots of free CD's and press packs to all the mobile phone networks and new media people! Each package had about 10 seperate artists bio's with photos reviews, the lot! There was a lot of paper that needed stapling! It was a good job that I was (and still am) pretty nifty with a stapler! There fore, we didn't get everything finished, so I'm gonna go back and work for her for a while tomorrow as well!

So yeh! thats pretty much everything I've done in the last two days, I've done the odd odd job as well, like collecting packages and passing on notes and stuff, I could tell you about that, but it's not that interesting. haha.

It sucks that there is only two days left of this work experience. I really hope I get more out of it! Fingers crossed :-)

I'm just listening to Thom Yorke's new(ish) solo album. It's really good, I'd recommend it to you if your into stuff like Radiohead, The Postal Service and The Spice Girls.

day 1, week 2

Above is a photograph of the kick ass track that myself and Scotty P constructed yesterday!

Anyway, Hi! Today was cool! I attended two meetings. One was about marketing which was pretty cool, just like seeing how deals get negotiated with CD of the week! etc etc in all the high street and online stores. The other was about.. well.. err I don't no really, promotion I think! People were thinking of idea's to Help Ben promote his single! There were some proper whacky ones!! But I cant say anything! It was really interesting, We spoke a little about a few other artists as well. But I cant really say cause its all confidential. sorry. (haha, like anyone cares)

Other things I did today:

• I went through the archive catalogue thingy. Checking that every release had a Product code and a barcode. In this catalogue some artists (the bigger, more successful artists) had a small section about them. So I had to check that each one had a link to the artists website :-)

• Ring up a driver and give him an artists mobile phone number as he couldn't find them at the airport and was there to pick them up! (this was EXCITING!!)
  

Thats about it, there were a few other small jobs, like posting off CD's and stuff but yeh,.. :-)

I'd just like to tell everyone that I have just signed up to .MAC account!!!!!! so now, I have a pretty sweet email address (dannylovett@mac.com) - SWEET! (im pretty chuffed about this :-p)

Ok i'm off to make my packed lunch and get some sleep!

byebye everyone :-) xxx

wii wii wii wii wii wii wii wii wii wii

Today me and Scott must have rang between us about 30 shops in Kent looking for somewhere that had a Nintendo Wii in stock to buy. We had no luck, I was gutted :-( So we went downstairs and made a killer track with the train set that my dad is selling on EBAY! I'll post a pic once I have one. Honestly, it was DYNAMITE!!

Its now however, 23.38 and waaaayy past my bedtime. Its gonna be hard work to get up in the morn, and stay awake on the train! Well excited tho!

Me Scott, Baz, Jack and Carmel went to weather spoons for Dinner and I had steak, and a spare rib. With chips and pepercorn sauce. Was gooood!

Night night :-)
x

Back to reality..

Saturday,.. and back to working at Tescos :-( with a realllyyy coooooool hangover. yep, felt like shit all day! Didn't even drink that much, just hadn't drank for a week so I got drunk pretty easily. whoops! All the same, work wasn't to bad! I think I mite stay in tonight, even tho I am already reaaalllyy bored!

excellent, Hannah's just shouted up that its Tea Time :-D Home made Pizza, I cant wait!

x

end of week one!

Yep!... Its the end of my first week :-(

Today was awesome tho!! My first task was to look through like a million trillion photos and negatives of the group Take That to find this one photo in particular that someone had dug out to see if we (Sony BMG) owned the photo. I couldn't find it :-p I found some interesting photos all the same, one of Howard when he was a looott younger, with his pet chameleon 'Nirvana' and one of Robbie Williams posing for a myspace shot, topless.. hahahaha. After that I sorted out some boxes of CD's and stuff and then I headed down to Columbia Records! I was working for the Press section. I got to work with someone called Marina who was really cool! She gave me a tonne of CD's! My first job was to cut out all the articles in todays newspapers which featured a Sony BMG artist! That was pretty chilled, we were listening to Beck, I really need to get one of Becks albums as he is AWESOME! We also listened to the new Kings Of Leon album and a band/artist called Hexstatic who was AWESOME!! I need to get some of that off iTunes! Once I had cut out all the press and added it into the relevant bands press pack I went for my lunch! Then after lunch I went back to Columbia and my job was to email journalists all around the country to make them aware that Ali Lewis was going to be playing a show near them. It was like "let me no if you need tickets and i'll sort you out" I felt pretty cool being able to say that:-p

I hung out in Columbia for most of the afternoon which was kick ass. But Marina had to go home so I had to head back up to Sony at about 3.30 :-( I went to work for this guy called Alex who was pretty cool, had a pretty basic job of sending an email and then taping up some card board boxes (with classical CD's in) to prepare them to be sent away to the Sony BMG archive warehouse or something! I head back upstairs to grab my bag and just as I left Sophie was like, oh, have a look in that cupboard over there, there should be loooaads of CD's that you will like and you can have. So I came home today with about 25 CD's in my bag. sweeeeeet :-p

So yeah, i've had an AWESOME week! And now i'm off to Tenterden town to drink a beer or three!

Day 4!

I cant believe I am almost half way through my work experience! :-( It's been great! Today was kick ass, I went to a really cool Sales meeting. I was in a room with about 15 other people from all sections of the record label (i.e. Marketing, Advertising, Promotion, Management, etc..) who were all discussing plans for future releases. They would hand out information leaflets and a copy of the CD and people would give feedback, there was the occasional banter. It was great! We watched Ben Mill's (X-Factor) debut video which was recorded in Africa 10 days ago, listened to a recording for a possible eurovision song contest entrant (I think) and discussed potential compilation and greatest hits releases in time for Fathers Day. Admittedly, I just sat quietly in the corner and took it all in.

In the morning I just did the same things that I did yesterday; a bit more online promotion for the Life On Mars Soundtrack and packaged some more Jiffy Bags with Promo CD's.

oh yeh, I also did some photocopying which was pretty fun........

If you want to see the Ben Mills video then tune into GM:TV tomorrow morning as he is getting interviewed by them and they will be showing a short 30 second clip. I've heard a few tracks off his album, its pretty good! Sounds a lot like Bryan Adams.

Thats it for now folks! x

Day 3

its late again! I got in at about 8.20pm today, I went to get a train from Putney station, and then like, 2 mins before it was due, a tanoy was like, we're sorry to inform you, but the next train to waterloo has been canceled due to engineering works at waterloo... Sooooo this meant waiting around for about another 15 minutes, also causing me to miss the train I was going to get at waterloo east. Overall, everything got delayed so that caused me to get home late!

I still had a great day tho! I started off the morning by doing some online promotion for the new Life On Mars soundtrack CD that came out last Monday. I was posting links on Forums and adding people to the Life On Mars Album myspace page which can be located HERE! After that I went down to another department, I'm not sure what department it was but I was working on classical CD's, doing pretty much the same thing as yesterday, removing duplicates etc... It was well boring, but at the same time I still enjoyed it! Finally I went back up to the commercial floor and put 100's of CD's into Jiffy bags to send out to important people scattered all over the country. The promotional CD's were going out to people who choose the sound tracks for computer games and TV adverts etc,.. That was pretty fun!

Then I came home. Had some food, made a packed lunch, checked the email, news and myspace. And Now here I am updating this before I got to sleep and do it all over again!

Night :-) x

Quick one! (day 2)

Its 11.30 and I should be asleep now, its gonna such a task to get up in the morn... I no I usually stay up late and then get up early for college, but its a lot more work when you have to travel to London and back, I guess i'm just not used to it! It was a bit poopa this eve cause Lewis had a mini Pancake party. Everyone was getting pissed and all that and responsible old me chose not to drink a drop! Everyone thought I was weeeeeelllll boring! I wanna be alert and all that when i'm at the BMG offices tho, and I think I am going to a meeting first thing so I really don't wanna fall asleep or anything!

So today was pretty cool! I didn't get up to an awful lot, I spent a majority of the day arranging CD's into some sort of archive which had all the Sony BMG releases. It was a bit boring but at the same time the archive was spread into a lot of separate offices so I got to go into some cool rooms and meet some new people. It was kinda confusing as each room was a different grouping in the alphabet, and the rooms were all over the place. Some of the CD's I went to put out were all ready in the archive. For the duplicates I packaged them into a box and then got them sent off to some warehouse.

After lunch I did the same thing except with music DVD's. Any CD's or DVD's that I saw I was aloud to take home for my self which was pretty cool. I haven't really looked properly yet but I will later in the week.

Thats all I did today, I made one or two trips down to the post room and stationary place and yep, that was it! All good tho! I'm just starting to get comfortable around the office and all that :-)

Scotty P is being a drunk asshole and keeps distracting me, cause he knows i wanna get this done and get to sleep, no doubt he will try to keep me awake for as long as possible. what a cool guy!

Night! :-) x

Work Experience Day 1

So today was my first day at Sony BMG. I got up nice and early, had a shower, ate breakfast and did all the other morning stuff! I got a lift to the train station with my Dad's friend Chris. I saw my Auntie Belinda at the platform so I spoke to her for a while and sat with her on the train. The train got to Waterloo East where I changed and got a train from Waterloo to Putney. I then walked to the Sony BMG offices from there! I found it a little bit hard to find, I walked up and down a few wrong roads and went back on my self a few times but got there in the end! :-D

I went to the reception and signed in and then waited for someone to come down and take me up to the floor I would be working on. (commercial devision) I was taken to a room with a desk and a computer. They then left me there and said "feel free to play on the internet or what not whilst you wait for someone to come and show you around." I went onto the Sony BMG intra-net and it was awesome! It told me all about the single and album sales for the last week and I found this really interesting!

Sophie (I think that is her name) then came and took me on a tour around the building! There's loads of different floors and stuff but it was really cool seeing every one doing different things. Everyone is so chilled out there, its ace! The coolest floor has to be Columbia! Just loads of different music coming out of different offices and loads of cool band merchandise lying around and stuff!

I got back up to the commercial devision floor where I met a guy called Ash who set me up with a task of updating some spread sheets to do with the highest position each Sony BMG artists has reached in the singles chart. That was pretty cool and interesting. After this I went down to help out with the promotions department of Columbia records. I worked with this cool girl who's name I have unfortunately forgotten! but we basically spent the rest of the day sticking stickers onto almost 1000 promotional Groove Amarda CD's. It sounds pretty boring, but it really wasn't! We spoke about bands and stuff and in the room next door was an A&R person who was listening to some reeaaalllyy awesome bands! We started this task at about 11.30 and spent the whole day on it! whats cool is that there are a good 1000 left to go! I'm not sure if I'll be going back to do those or not, but i'm really not fussed if I have to! It was chilled.

After this I went back upstairs and met a woman called Nadia. She set me with a simple task of counting some CD's and checking that their bar codes matched. As It was almost 6 o'clock we decided it would be best to start work on that tomorrow morning! So I grabbed my coat and bag and set off home!

I listened to some cracking tunes on the way home! I'm really enjoying this album by an artist called "Immoor" which is called "The Thievery Of Your Own Things". You can check out some songs HERE!

I also listened to some classic Jimmy Eat World, a bit of Blink and Richard Picot!

Sorry if you found this really boring! Its just for a personal reference really! :-)

Dan xx