Ricardo Oropeza is a 2019 Rowan University alumnus who majored in Music Industry. Ricardo works at Sony Music Entertainment as a Senior Label Analyst. He discusses his time at Rowan, how internship experience helped him in his job search, his responsibilities at his current role for Sony Music Entertainment, and the several clubs he participated in while at Rowan; the Advertising Club, the Outdoors Club, The Whit, and the Rowan Alternative Music Club.
Why did Rowan stand out for you and your college search?
Rowan stood out to me for a few main reasons. The first way was through word of mouth. In my high school in Randolph and my graduating class, we had six people attending Rowan. As someone with no family members who have been through the college process previously, I had limited information on the process and my options. Because of this, when I thought of college, I only thought of Ivy League colleges and universities and nothing else. Hearing through other students at my high school who decided to go to Rowan opened me up to options available in New Jersey, like Ramapo, Rowan, and others.
Rowan stood out to me because it was close to my parents and had the major I was interested in at the time, Computer Science. Furthermore, luckily enough, it was also an outstanding music school with a brand new Music Industry Program, and I am fortunate to be part of one of the first graduating classes. Rowan was also affordable for my family and me compared to other universities.
How did you discover the music industry program?
One of the reasons why I am very happy that I went to Rowan one was because my advisor was very involved and constantly informed me of the options and academic and professional paths I had available to me. I went to her for everything because I did not know what I was doing half the time; it is good to have someone there who is knowledgeable. In one of the meetings I had with her, we talked about what I wanted to do and what experience I had in my life before college. Through this discussion, I expressed that I wanted to be a music producer and wanted to work in the music industry.
Before college, I was DJing for many weddings and special events and continued to DJ throughout my college career. From this, I realized that I liked music, but I also had experience within the business and industry. Thankfully enough, once I was a computer science major for one semester, I was not too fond of it. My disliking of the major had nothing to do with education; I did not feel like it aligned with what I wanted to do in my life. However, once my counselor told me there was a new course and a new major popping up, she advised me to go and have a conversation with the head of the department; I ended up talking to Mathieu Gendreau.
Matthew is the person that sold me on switching majors and pursuing the music industry program. I also talked to the rest of the professors. They all had a strong passion and dedication toward the student. It was evident that they cared not only about what they were teaching but also about whom they were teaching. That is my origin story for finding out about the major and then deciding to pursue it.
Can you talk about any clubs or extracurriculars you were involved with?
For starters, I was part of the Advertising Club, which was the first club I joined in college. I wanted to learn more about advertising. Funny enough, I was watching Mad Men, and at that time, I thought it seemed cool and wanted to learn more. The President of the Advertising Club at the time sold me on it. The club needed a board member for their service chair, and it would be an excellent opportunity to learn what a service chair would do, what it means to be part of the club, and learn more about advertising. Being part of this club helped me expand my network of professionals. I made a lot of good connections there with upperclassmen, and I enjoyed going on their yearly trip to New York to see some of the advertising agencies. That was really the highlight for the club.
I was also part of the Outdoors Club, which was a great experience. I am a huge fan of hiking and being outdoors, and one of the new hobbies I picked up recently is surfing. So I joined that club with all my friends and my two roommates. It was an easy choice because I already knew many people who had joined it. Furthermore, it was a great excuse to make new friends and be outdoors simultaneously.
Finally, I also worked at The Whit. I was not at The Whit for long because balancing school work and extracurriculars was too much, but it was a great experience. I wanted to improve my writing skills at the time because that is a crucial skill to have in life. It also gave me many excuses to talk to different people in different majors and hear about their stories. However, it did not work out after that because it was too much work for me.
The last club I joined, which I am very grateful for, is the Rowan Alternative Music Club. This club was a great way to get more involved in the local music scene. Everyone in the club loves music and can talk their ear off about their favorite artists and album tracks. This is where I felt right at home. They got me in touch with many people and local musicians, so it was a great place to meet new people. The overarching theme for all these clubs is to meet new people and make new connections; these people love the same things I do, and we bonded over that.
There are two specializations I understand in the Music Industry Program, Business and Technology. Which was your specialty?
My speciality was business.
Can you talk a little bit about your passion project, the music blog you developed?
The music blog was definitely a passion project. I started it with my two roommates, who were also huge music people; each of us had distinct music tastes. Before I went to college, I was closed-minded to music and stayed in my lane; I did not explore much. These two people I met- who later became my roommates- expanded my vision and showed me many rock bands I had never heard of before. Everyone has different perspectives on how music touches them; I thought it would be cool to share what I think about music and create a community that talks about these experiences with music to others.
The blog was a great chance to do an over-encompassing project that can touch on my writing, people, tech, analytics, and digital marketing skills. It was like a holistic project with multiple little bubbles that I could grow individually as time passed and could help me get a job later on in life. So that was like the pitch that I threw up to my room. However, at the end of the day, it was really more for the musical aspect of it.
My roommate was a computer science major, allowing us to build the blog from the ground up. I started learning about servers when I got my Google Analytics certification. Then, each year, we would make new renditions of it. However, all the way through the end of college, it was my number one thing to do because it was the constant thing in my life that kept pushing me forward and trying to learn new things.
Nevertheless, the blog became my senior thesis for the music business program. So I spruced it up for the thesis and made it nice looking; I made a few slides with analytics on how it has grown over the past four years. The blog was an over-encompassing project for the past four years, and I wanted to grow on the specific skills that will, later on, be a sellable point for me in the future.
What is your favorite memory from Rowan?
During the first two years of living on campus, I lived at Chestnut and Edgewood, and those two years were very memorable for me. There was a quote that was always said when I was there “Chestnut is lit.” It was always the place to be for first-year students if they wanted a sociable and exciting experience; I had some very memorable moments there. However, at Edgewood, it was the first time we had our bathroom, living area, and kitchen. It started feeling more like real life, and all my roommates and I started cooking, hanging out more, and having get-togethers and dinner nights. Those two are some very memorable moments of my college career.
After Edgewood, we moved out and off-campus. Then it became a whole different story. I made the most friends in those two years. Even though I was always on campus, I was still very involved and met many new people.
Can you tell us about your time from graduation to now?
I graduated in May of 2019 with no job in mind. I had some ideas of where I wanted to be, connections that I wanted to continue through internships, and jobs that I was applying to. However, I wanted to take the time to enjoy my last summer before I went into full-on adult life. I decided to start working with my dad to power wash houses from this decision. I just became his little helper while helping him with anything. And then, other than that, just doing nothing other than applying to jobs and having a good old time.
Thankfully, one day, I reached out to the person who helped me get a footing in the music industry. It was the person who got me the internship at the orchard, the music distribution branch of Sony. I had worked with him before, and he was one of my best friend’s sister’s best friends; we were close. Moreover, we have many of the same passions, like music. So I reached out to him a few weeks before, saying, “Let’s catch up.” He responded, “It is funny that you reached out because your old boss is now looking for an assistant at Sony in the legacy division.” So I immediately wanted to interview for the position and would love the opportunity to be considered. She remembered me because I was also her intern, which is very special.
On my first day, I dressed in a full suit tie because I wanted to be as professional as possible, and when I entered the building, everyone was wearing baggy jeans, long hair, and T-shirts. After interviewing her, she liked me, and I started my job on my birthday that same year, September 27, 2019; that will always be a memorable moment. I got the position as an administrative assistant for the SVP of sales for Legacy Recordings; Legacy Recordings deals with Sony’s catalog.
I got to work with many incredible legends in the music industry. I started as an admin assistant. Two years later, Covid-19 began, and everything slowed down. Fortunately, I was still living with my parents. So that was one easy financial decision. I could stay with them, help them out in any city in any way I can. I also did not have to commute anymore, so I had a lot more time to work, grind things out, learn more about what I was doing, and catch up on many media, of course, lots of Netflix. So once, once I started getting into the nitty-gritty of my job, two years in, I got a promotion to the coordinator. Furthermore, I worked very closely with the analytics director at that time. He took me under his wing. It was the first day, and I sat down with him because I asked what it meant to be an analyst. In a few words, he just told me, “We are storytellers, we create, we have a set of data. Our job is to dig through the data and pick out point facts that we want to highlight to create a storyline for this campaign.” So I started attending all the meetings with the data analysts and taking classes online with Google. Recently, I started a new job as a senior analyst for the legacy division.
To recap, I started with legacy, moved to a different division to learn, and am now back just two positions up. So now my main job is to drill down into the catalog, figure out those stories that need to be told, and work side by side with the people that I was working with before, but now at a different label, look different level. I am very grateful to be here and for the people who have continued to support me in my career.
What do you do on a daily basis in your position?
I try to wake up between 7:30 and 8:00 AM to get to the office by 9:00 AM. My day-to-day goes with running reports for the different labels within Sony. These reports are everything to do with everything from consumption to sales to general trends within the industry. That is what usually takes most of my time, just reporting. There are a bunch of tools that people before me have already made. My team and I optimize and configure these reports to fit a label’s needs. Daily, I run more than a few reports for each label. Then after, I get drilled down into dashboards; that is my new hobby. We have worked on Tableau, which is just a way to visualize data, and I used to be a graphic designer or a freelance graphic designer. It is really fun to meld these things I learned before with new skills like analysis; I get to visualize what I can see in the data in a more graphic and friendly way.
My main tasks fluctuate between reporting, which is a lock and critical process that I do throughout the week that helps all the labels, and the creative art of constructing, optimizing, and developing tools like self-service tools for these labels to go in and look at the data without the need of bio.
How did you obtain your internships?
My first internship at Rowan was at The Orchard on the Digital Retail Sales Team. They worked with digital partners to market New Digital Albums on Spotify, Apple Music, and other audio streaming services. I obtained that internship because I started reaching out to people in my network on LinkedIn and by email. I was frequently asking individuals to meet me for coffee or for a meeting to discuss my interests and my professional career path; networking and building as many connections as you can is critical in the business world. Thankfully, I had a mutual friend working at The Orchard who was also looking for interns. This is really a situation where I was in the right place at the right time. I got the position and worked there for six months; It was a dream come true.
My second work experience and internship was at Jazz House Kids in Montclair, NJ. They are a summer camp school that teaches kids about jazz music through industry professionals. After four years of summer camp, the children get to perform at legendary places in New York City. Instead of being an intern, they hired me as a graphic designer last summer. That worked out well, and I very much enjoyed it.
How did the music industry program help prepare you for your career?
Networking helped me immensely, along with the guidance I had from my professors. The professors cared a lot about their students and took lots of time out of their day to talk to them. In addition, Rowan offers a few professional development classes where you can do extracurriculars through different clubs, and you have different advisors for different schools you are part of. So there is someone somewhere ready to help you and develop as a person every step of the way. In the music industry program, specifically, since we are such a small group of people, it felt more like a family. You get to know everyone just because you are with them in every class. That is an experience that I did not get in computer science or any other classes outside of the industry. So it helped a lot in networking, making new friends, and building that network of people who all love the same thing you do and want to help achieve. Furthermore, it is the best place to collaborate if you are a producer, artist, or anything in between because everyone wants to be part of those networking events.
What is your advice for future profs in the program?
If I had to give any advice, I would let people know that they are not stuck in one lane and are free to explore their interests. Even if you attend college and are part of a specific core course and a particular major, you may still proceed to go into the industry. The things you do outside of college and the classroom get you noticed by employers around you. I also recommend embracing failure; failure is always going to happen. However, you learn how to problem-solve and deal with your mistakes when you fail. Finally, I would also say to believe in yourself even if no one else does. Believing in yourself is half the battle.
Like what you see?
Story produced by:
Natalie DePersia, senior public relations major