Ethan Schiff, producer of the Berklee Summer in the City 2012 WUMB, Georges Island and Harvard Longwood concert series’, Founder of  Indie Basic, Artist Manager at Ethan Schiff Entertainment and current Berklee Music Business Major, gives his insight to the wonderful opportunities Summer in the City gives emerging artists.
Amelia Ali

Amelia Ali

When you’re a relatively new upcoming artist, there’s often a good amount of compromise that needs to take place. At this stage in a musical career, exposure is ultimately the most important thing to be gained from a performance. Sometimes even if you don’t get paid or loose money to traveling expenses, the chance to raise awareness about your music is worth it. But every once in a while you come across an opportunity that is beneficial both financially and promotionally. The Berklee Summer in the City Series is just that.

This series is one of the few out there that is truly dedicated to helping artists. While many people know that Berklee coordinates and finds talent for these shows, they don’t realize that Berklee also pays for professional-quality videos to be made promoting each show, pays for all necessary mastering and duplication processes for a compilation disc, and also hires students focused on the business side of music to help book and market the shows, as well as being the day-of-show contact person to organize logistics.

The goal of Berklee’s Marketing department is to help support motivated artists move forward in their careers. We definitely need more people like that working with emerging artists, and we definitely need more events like the Berklee Summer in the City Series to benefit musicians of all types.