Organizational Category at Forward Artist Management
So far throughout my internship experience, I’ve learned that the culture of Forward Artist Management is relatively laid back. FAM is a talent management company that focuses largely on talent in the music industry. They currently have ten clients on their roster and most of the day-to-day tasks vary depending on what their clients are working on. So far, a large chunk of my first few weeks has centered around getting to know the team and the software that they use. FAM is a relatively small company – as of right now, there are only 5 full-time employees on staff, as well as two other interns. I was able to meet with each employee individually on Zoom, and they really made me feel included and welcome at the company. Especially since this is a fully remote internship, it was nice that they were able to take the time out of their day to welcome us into the team.
Most days, the employees at the company communicate through Slack chats and will do Zoom calls from time to time outside of the designated once-a-week meetings. Interns will direct message various employees in the company for specific assignments, and there are other group channels for specific projects. In addition, there is a “random” chat where people can share music they’ve found, news in the industry, etc. which is nice because I can better get to know the people within the company outside of strictly work assignments. Beyond that, a lot of the employees prefer to communicate over text message because the three interns share the same Slack account, so on the days where more than one of us are working it tends to get complicated and confusing (the account is just labeled “FAM Intern” for all of us so it isn’t clear who is messaging when).
When evaluating the initial strengths and weaknesses of the company, a few things stand out in my mind. One strength is that job assignments are very streamlined and that each intern has their own project to work on. This helps alleviate any confusion or overlap between interns, and also gives each of us a lot more personal responsibility. For example, while all three interns are working on HiNote (which is a website that is similar to Cameo, except it’s strictly for musical artists to connect with fans), one intern is in charge of watching and approving videos to send to customers while I am in charge of data analytics and tracking customer behavior to make the needed improvements to the site experience. While we do collaborate with the other interns, it is much easier to pick up where you left off on your work (especially because we don’t work every day, so I don’t have to worry about tracking down an intern on their day off if I need to catch up).
One main weakness that I’ve noticed is the intern Slack account. Because this internship is fully remote, chats are the main ways in which we can get assignments outside of texting. However, there is only one intern account for the three of us to share. Therefore, when more than one intern is working at the same time, it becomes difficult for employees on the other end to know who’s reaching out to them (without the interns explicitly stating it in each message). I think that considering how small the company is, it would be helpful for each intern to have their own account (even if it’s labeled “FAM Intern – Emma”). This way it would avoid a lot of confusion on both the intern’s end as well as the employees’.
Overall, I am really excited about my internship this summer and I can’t wait to see how my responsibilities evolve over the coming weeks.