INTERNSHIP WITH RBI LAUNCHES STUDENT’S CAREER IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

This April, I packed up my car and drove down to Fort Worth in the middle of finals week to start an internship for RBI Music, a music products distribution company with a wide range of brands and absolutely massive reach. Over the last 60 years, RBI Music has grown exponentially, acquiring music product brands, expanding its dealer network, and contracting with major manufacturers to bring instruments into previously unreached places.

My internship formally lasted from April 26th to May 10th, 2021, and I was hired as a full-time employee immediately following the conclusion of the internship period, with a departure date of July 23rd, 2021. During my time at RBI Music, my work varied daily, including tasks like quality control, product data cleanup, instrument assembly, marketing copy rewrites, inventory management, artist relations, recording projects, and more.

Fortunately, the above responsibilities did not happen in a vacuum. My formal title at RBI Music was “Marketing Intern,” which I quickly learned was much less advertising and much more delivering our products into the public marketplace. As such, one of my key internship responsibilities has been the massive overhauls of product data and marketing copy for two major brands: Grover Pro Percussion and Toca Percussion.

Unfortunately, product management under prior ownership for both brands was poor, and no centralized directories of product information existed for marketing, logistics, or sales teams to reference. Between the Grover Pro Percussion and Toca Percussion brands, I compiled product information for over a thousand different products: product name, UPCs, boxed/unboxed/master carton item weights and dimensions, clean product photos, color, make/model names, differentiating features, countries of origin, warranty information, and Prop 65 information.

Once this was complete, I created 1,046 unique paragraphs – one per product – and 5,230 individual pieces of marketing copy. It will take a while for these changes to filter out to the industry – we have to update our own websites and our own listings, then need to incentivize dealers to update their own – but I can confidently say that I’ve changed the course of two massive names in the percussion world, and I’m proud of that.

My manager, Lane Davy, established an explicit priority on day one that I was to learn the ins and outs of the music products industry. I have helped with logistics and supply chain management (where the bulk of my full-time career has been) and learned how the big drum companies source and make their gear. I’ve talked to some of the best artists in the world, making sure they had the gear to cover their needs as the live music scene starts to come back to life. I’ve sat in on financing decisions, watching as a multi-million dollar company turns the gears to acquire yet another famous brand, all while remaining relatively anonymous to maintain a feeling of intimacy with customers.

I learned a lot during my internship, and can’t quite find the words for how impactful it has been. I went into this internship relatively sure that it was the right field for me – given my previous professional supply chain work and my music background, it absolutely felt right. I’ve learned just how much work it takes to get a single drum into a school, learned just how personal the entire industry is – and how the right recommendation can completely launch a career. I’ve learned about working in a massively multi-cultural office with manufacturers all across the world, learned how to separate my work and my private life, learned how to be a better, more sensitive human being in a wide range of situations. And I’m so, so grateful.

Clearly, it’s been an insanely packed summer. All of this has contributed to a much wider view of the music products industry than I ever could’ve received just staying in Utah, and my career has genuinely been kickstarted by my time here. The people here at RBI Music have taken me under their wing and made it a priority to expand my worldview and my industry network, and I’m beyond indebted to them for it.