I am a month and some change into working for Third Side Music in Montreal, and it feels like I could have a lifetime of this ahead of me and I wouldn’t mind. A usual day at work will find me going through the extensive catalog of music that Third Side represents. I’ll look up songs on our music library, Soundminer, to make sure that they’re there and that they are the best audio file possible so that we can send them to our clients. With any luck, they’ll make it into various forms of media, including television, video games, and commercials.
There’s a lot to learn working at Third Side, both in work, where I’ve learned much in the way of research as I collect data on the tracks we own the rights to, and in music, as I’ve learned about the artists we represent and their respective genres. But, of everything I’ve picked up, nothing is more enjoyable than what I’ve gained going through the Studio One catalog, which is a record label we represent. It requires a lot of digging because most of what we get from them dates back to the 60s and 70s in Jamaica and, particularly during its earlier years, the Jamaican music scene had little regard for tracking when things came out, as well as for publishing law. I also love learning about the genre of ska music, how it evolved into rocksteady and reggae, and how one country so well defined its own style of music. The early house band of the label, the Skatalites, was particularly influential, and many of its members had lifelong careers in the Jamaican music scene. Doing something about the group for my final history project is very tempting. We’ll see what more I soak up in my remaining six weeks here. It’ll go by fast.
Photo credit: https://www.musitechnic.com/
