Navigating the Unexpected: Ali Matkosky
Thanks for listening to “Navigating the Unexpected”, the podcast series from the
Newhouse Career Development Center in which we chat with communications industry
professionals about the career obstacles they have overcome and how they have made the most
out of unexpected situations. I’m Kelly Barnett, in this episode we’re chatting with Ali Matkosky
who graduated from Newhouse in 2010 with a dream of applying her PR degree to the world of
country music. Ali shares with us how she made her way into the Nashville music scene,
working her way to National Promotions Manager at Warner Music Group before moving to Big
Loud Records. I’ll let Ali tell you about the rest. This conversation took place via Zoom in front
of a student audience, so you’ll hear some of their questions at the end. Some portions of the
conversation have been edited for clarity.
Kelly: Ali it is so great to have you here. Ally graduated from Newhouse in 2010, and so we’re
gonna talk about her whole process, how she ended up where she is today, but just the general
overview. She started off with Provident Music Group and made her way up to National
Promotions Manager there, continued at Warner Music Group, and today she’s at Big Loud
Records down in Nashville as the National Director of Promotions, and she’s excited to talk to
you, so please help me welcome Ali Matkosky.
Ali: Hi guys, I’m happy to be here. Thank you for having me, Kelly.
Kelly: Yeah! I think maybe it’s helpful to talk about where you started out. Maybe you can give
us a little bit of background about where you’re from and where you started out in your career.
Ali: I’m originally from western New York, south of Buffalo. My dad and his family actually
grew up in Camillus, so I grew up kind of a Cuse loving family. We watched basketball games, it
was a thing that we did, so when I realized that I wanted to pursue a degree in some form of
communication, Syracuse and Newhouse was obviously my very first choice of college, so I
applied, I think I applied early decision, and graduated high school in 2006, went to Newhouse. I
was very fortunate to have a work study job in the Career Development Center with Kelly which
was awesome, and we’ve kept in touch all of these years, obviously.
So, I had a PR degree from Newhouse, and, probably, the summer before my senior year, I
realized I wanted to pursue the music industry. The Bandier program was not an option when I
was in school, and so I realized I wanted to be in the music industry, I didn’t really know what
that meant. I knew that I had had some internships, like I interned for a PR firm in New York
City. I’d seen that side, and realized maybe that side wasn’t for me. I wanted to move to
Nashville, so I did that late summer of 2010, and then, like Kelly said, I had, and we’ll probably
get into that a little later, but I had four family connections. I had one family friend who knew
four people in Nashville, introduced me to them, and I just moved to Nashville and started
networking and eventually got a job in the industry, and have kind of continued since then, and
now I work at Big Loud Records.
Kelly: Excellent, thank you! One thing, when you and I were talking about you coming and
speaking to students, that we touched on was that you didn’t really graduate into the healthiest
economy either, and that was kind of a struggle. Do you want to talk to us a little about , you
know, leaving Newhouse, and what that process was like to get you to Nashville, and get
working, maybe, that first job.
Ali: Yeah. I graduated in 2010 and, I was telling Kelly that I was on a phone call with my sister
yesterday, who graduated in 2008, and we were kind of joking about having graduated into a
recession, and that is exactly what it was, so there was not a job available to me as soon as I
graduated school. There was not, honestly, even a hint of said “job-promise”, so I decided I
wanted to move to Nashville, and I drove down just me and my car with all of my stuff, and
drove down to Nashville because I knew that if I wanted to work in Nashville I needed to be in
Nashville. And, you know, Nashville is a small town atmosphere, if you will, so just by being in
Nashville, and going to the bar, or playing in a kickball league with random people, I was
meeting music industry people all the time. It was really important for me to be here, but I had a
family friend, like I said, who knew four people, so they said, “OK, I’ll set you up some
meetings with these four people. I remember going into one of the meetings and it was an artist
manager and he said, “OK, here’s the good news. The good news is: you seem pretty smart and
put together, and I think you’ll do well in this industry. The bad news is: it’s gonna take you nine
to twelve months to get a job here in the music industry. And I was like, hmph, buddy, have you
met me? No it’s not, like, I’m pretty determined, I’m gonna meet a bunch of people, like, it’s not
gonna take me nine to twelve months. Challenge accepted. Right? So, I got a waitressing job
because I had to pay my bills, I worked as an office manager, just doing what I had to do to stay
in Nashville because I knew that that was the most important thing if I wanted to pursue my goal
of working at a record label. And I continued to meet people and stay in touch with those four
people that I knew, and exactly twelve months later, I got my first job in the music business. So,
it took me a year, and I thank him for that because I also feel like, that was almost a little
challenge to me, and it really motivated me, and if I hadn’t been so motivated, it might have
taken me 18 months, so it was really challenging, and I just had to do, I had to do what I had to
do to make ends meet, and I think, because I was so passionate about my career path, it was easy
and it felt worth it, and I knew what I wanted the end goal to be. It was not easy working double
shifts at a restaurant, which, by the way, the restaurant that I chose to work in was one, when I
first moved to town, one person I met said, “Oh! This restaurant called Cantina Loredo,” which
guys might know of it’s a small chain, “this restaurant called Cantina Loredo, that’s where all the
music industry people hang out. That’s where managers have their lunches and yadda yadda.” So
then, I was like, OK that’s where I have to work. So it was little things like that, that just made
me very determined, but it did take me a year to find the job that I wanted, which was an entry
level job that, honestly I, A: didn’t even know existed, and B: was not the perfect job that I
wanted.
Kelly: So, you got that first job. Was that a result of any of the meetings that you had?
Ali: One of the four people that I met with was an artist manager, and she managed a couple of
Christian acts, and I had never been, you know, I didn’t grow up listening to Christian music,
Christian radio,that was not a huge passion of mine. Obviously very fortunate for those
connections, and maybe like four months in, somebody was hiring a promotion coordinator, so if
you don’t know, record labels have radio promotion teams, and so just because Blake Shelton or
Ariana Grande release a song to radio and say “this is my next single”, it just doesn’t get played
by itself. There’s an entire team of people that have relationships with those radio stations to
make that happen and eventually get number one songs. And, so there was a promotion team at a
Christian label that was hiring a coordinator, and she recommended me, sent my resume, I went
in for an interview, I didn’t get the job. And I was bummed, and I was like man, I just, I felt like
I killed it, you know, they said I was in their top two, they hired somebody else, that just really
sucks, and probably six months after that, I get a text and it says, “Hey, we’re hiring a promotion
coordinator. I got your resume from Andrea Clyde,” who I had interviewed with before, “are you
interested in the job?” It didn’t say the person’s name, it didn’t say the company, it said nothing!
And so, I replied and just said, “Yes, who is this, and what company?” And so, I met him for
lunch the next day, and I got hired as the promotion coordinator, in a role that I didn’t even know
existed, and now has become my entire career path, but obviously I was open, I wanted to get
into the industry any way that I could, and even though it was six months down the road, it
resulted directly in a connection that I had made in the beginning.
Kelly: Yeah, maybe, you wanted to get that first job because that would’ve been great and less
stressful, but you never know where it’s gonna go when you meet somebody. It could be an
interviewer, it could be one of your family friends, like you just never know.
Ali: Absolutely. Even down to, like, I joked that I played in a beer kickball league, and I just got,
like, randomly assigned to a team, and my time was an entire group of friends who worked at
William Morris Agency, which is a booking agency. And they, and they’re still to this day,
they’re some of my closest friends in Nashville, and, you know, now they’re booking agents, and
they’ve got these thriving careers, and, you know, we would go to Chewy’s happy hour just to
eat the free chips and salsa when we were playing beer league kickball and none of us had any
sorts of jobs. So, you just never know where those connections are gonna come from.
Kelly: Yeah, you never know what you’re going to bond over, every relationship you have in
your life is because you have something in common with somebody, and at first it was kickball,
but then it was chips and salsa, and then it was the music industry. That’s pretty great.
Ali: Exactly.
Kelly: So when you were dealing with that year that you didn’t want to be job hunting, but ended
up job hunting, how did you keep yourself motivated and moving along and just, you know,
trusting that the process was going to work for you?
Ali: Yeah, I would be lying if I said that sometimes it was really, like it wasn’t really hard, like,
sometimes it was just super unmotivating. I felt like, man I remember telling myself I could work
at a restaurant anywhere, like I don’t know, why am I here, serving, I could serve and live at
home if I wanted to. My family lives in Skaneateles, I could be in Skaneateles working at
Doug’s Fish Fry and not have to be in Nashville trying to pay my own bills, serving. So I
remember feeling pretty discouraged a couple of times, but the best thing I ever did was move to
Nashville and be around the industry that I wanted to be in. And then, I would go, you know
there’s a ton of free shows all the time, so I would go to those, and that’s what kept me
motivated. I just, every time I would go out, see a show, go down the Broadway and see live
music, I was like, you know, this is what I want to do. I am not here for nothing, this is what I
want to do, and I think if you’re passionate about that, then it will pan out in the end, but I mean
my passion for country music, which I didn’t even start in country music in the first seven years
of my career, but my passion for country music is what kept me in Nashville, and now here I am,
I’m working at, you know, one of the most thriving independent country record labels right now.
And although, sometimes, it felt like it took a really long time to get there, you know I graduated
ten years ago, that’s really nothing in the grand scheme of things, so I think just my passion and
you know being really being determined, I’m a little stubborn, being determined to move to
Nashville to do what I wanted to do and prove to everybody that it was possible was really
motivating.
Kelly: Do you find that you did anything in particular to keep your spirits up? Like, were you
celebrating each tiny little win, or, like, what were you doing?
Ali: Yeah, definitely celebrating each little tiny win. Every email that I got back from somebody
that I had made a connection with felt like, OK that’s a step in the right direction. And, you
know, I had to be my own biggest cheerleader. I had to tell myself, like all the time, like, hey,
you’re capable, and worthy, and you, like, you will bring value to a company. And if I didn’t
believe in myself, nobody was gonna believe in me. If I didn’t walk into a job interview that I
didn’t get, with confidence, then they surely weren’t gonna feel confident in picking me, so I just
was always my biggest cheerleader, and everytime I met somebody, I remember, I met this girl
through one of my friends who was in beauty school, and she was dating a guy in the music
industry, and that felt like the biggest win to me. I was like, perfect! If we all go to happy hour
together, I’ll meet him. I never did, but that drove me for the next three weeks, right, I was like
maybe one day we’ll all go to happy hour and I’ll get to talk to him, and then I’ll figure it out.
So, just, like, holding onto little glimmers of hope, and, again, knowing that I would make it
work being my biggest cheerleader, and confident in myself and my ability.
Kelly: I think you brought up a lot of really great points there. I really love the, you know, I
might meet that boyfriend that’s great. OK, so you didn’t, but that’s great, that’s goal setting, and
that was keeping you making progress. You probably did a lot of other things in those three
weeks too that maybe were more fruitful in the end, um, but you were keeping your eye on a
goal and moving toward it.
Ali: Yeah, exactly. And seeing what those friends that worked at William Morris, they were
working in the mail room, I mean, I wasn’t getting a tone of exposure to things, but when they
had an extra ticket to a show, they would invite me, and I had to sometimes drag myself out of
the house on a Friday night when I just was exhausted from working all week because I knew
there could be a small win in that place. And, to this day, some of that stuff that I feel like didn’t
make a difference, and although it wasn’t super tangible, like at this point now, I work with three
booking agents at William Morris every week. We’re always in contact, and two of them I met
going to shows with in the very beginning, so just even though that didn’t feel tangible, we just
feel like now we have had a ten year connection, and it just makes our conversations and our
jobs just that much more fun and light, and we feel like we’ve kind of done it together.
Kelly: You came up together from all of that. That’s great. If you had to go back, and I know this
is really simmering a lot of experience and a lot of happenings down to just a couple things, but
are there a couple of things that stand out to you as, like, real turing points for you in your job
search, getting that first job, or along your career?
Ali: Definitely the interviewing and not getting a job felt like a big turning point, which feels
kind of weird, right? But, it made me realize that I was a top-two contender, and I might not be
for everybody, but I’m definitely the right fit for somebody, and it wasn’t personal to me. It just
was, I think, they just wanted a different kind of personality in that role. I ended up working at
that company, by the way, that was Warner. I ended up working there probably three years later,
and it was an ongoing joke with my VP of Promotions, who would say, “remember that one time
you interviewed and I didn’t hire you, and then three years later I’m calling you trying to hire
you away from another company.” So, that was a pretty big turning point in my job search, and
then, just the text out of nowhere, like you guys, you just never know. You just never know. It
was a random text from a random number, didn’t even say his name or the company that he
worked for, and it had been six months, so you just, you just never know.
Kelly: You really don’t. Take every opportunity, right? Just because you never know where it’s
gonna come from.
Ali: Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I never listened to Christian music or wasn’t passionate
about that format, and I got this job in Christian music, right, and so, at first, it was really
exciting. I was the promotions coordinator and in eight weeks I got promoted and they gave me a
regional title, and what the regionals do is they’re the main point of contact between the radio
station and the artist. So, any time the radio station wants an artist interview, or wants to meet the
artist, or wants the artist to come play a show at the radio station, it would go through me. Any
time that I needed the radio station to play my artists’ songs, it would go through me, right, so it
was kind of like a two way funnel. It was really exciting, I was getting promoted quickly, I got
hired away to another company, and I remember being like five years into it thinking, OK but
I’m not passionate about this format, like, I’ve learned a lot, and I’m so thankful for the people
who gave me these experiences, but I really want to be in country music. I don’t, I don’t want to
be in Christian music. And I remember somebody telling me, “well, hey, you’re five years in and
you’ve pigeonholed yourself now, like, you’re never gonna get hired out of Christian music and
into country music,” and I was like, devastated. I was like have I made all of the wrong
decisions, right, should I have not taken that first job because it wasn’t the perfect career path for
me? Should I have said no, and been like, no I don’t want to work in Christian music, so I’m just
gonna say no to this job and wait for a country gig to come up, and, like, totally doubting that.
And then it was two and a half more years before I got a job in country, and I’m just so, I’m
really thankful I didn’t think that way, and that I took the jobs that were available to me, and I
learned from what I learned from. And, you know, now I’ve been taken out of the Christian
format and into the country format, and my boss said to me the other day, she said, “yeah
somebody called and they were looking to hire a national promotion,” which is what I do, and
she was like, “listen, you need to hire outside of the format, you need to hire somebody from
another format, and bring them in.” And now it’s become this kind of thing for us in our
business, right, like there’s a lot of really good people that you just haven’t met yet, they’re just
living out in another world here just parallel to ours. And, so I’m just very, I feel like what I want
to tell everybody is, like, you are not making the wrong choices in taking a job that you feel isn’t
the perfect job for you because it’s gonna teach you a lot, and as long as you’re willing to learn,
and thankful, and progressing, like, you should always be kind of, you know, setting your next
goal and moving forward, like I was moving up in the Christian music industry. As long as
you’re progressing, it is not the wrong move, and it is not the wrong move for you, and, for me,
it took a long time, but for the last year and a half I’ve been in my dream job, and it’s incredible,
it’s just incredible.
Kelly: That’s a really important point, you know, it’s all about transferable skillsets, right? You
were doing things in the Christian music sphere that could translate over into country and you
just had to wait for the right time and the right place. So, I’m glad you brought that up.
Ali: And the right person that could see, not like, I didn’t want a job with somebody who, you
know, couldn’t tell that my skills could transfer. The same job, just a different format, just a
different set of program directors at radio stations to learn, and if somebody couldn’t see that, I
didn’t want to work for them anyway. You know? And now my current boss, our current VP of
Operations has just been amazing, and she could see that right away, she had the vision and she
and I are, like, lock step in line doing really awesome things together now I can’t, neither of us
can, imagine having it any other way, so it’s been, yeah it’s perfect.
Kelly: That’s fantastic. That’s so important, you know, to be thinking about as you’re looking for
that first opportunity out of school. A lot of the things you talked about, when you’re living in
those moments, it’s so stressful, that’s so much, there’s so many unknowns, you don’t know
what’s gonna happen, and I feel like when we’re all in those types of scenarios, if we could just
know that it’s going to be OK, we’d be patient, we can wait for it. But we don’t have that luxury,
so how did you cope with that stress? What did you do, I mean, it ties into the motivation things
we were talking about before, but can you just talk about how you dealt with the stress of the
unknowns?
Ali: Yeah, when you’re in that time, every day feels like a year, every year feels like three years,
and it just, it felt like I’ve been on this grind forever, and nothing is happening. I would say, I
was in Nashville, I didn’t know a single person, I moved completely alone, and I had probably
three people in my life that I would talk to every day that would keep me grounded and keep me
motivated. One thing my mom would say to me all the time, she would be like, “hey Ali
remember, remember when you wanted to move to Nashville and work in the music industry.”
Especially when I had my first job in the Christian industry and I was getting frustrated about not
being in the country industry. My mom would say, “remember when you wanted to do that, and
now you’re down there doing it.” And it would just, like, make me take a deep breath and I’d
exhale and be like, you know, you’re right, and so I think just surrounding yourself with people
who believe in you, but also, like, kind of keep you grounded, like, “hey, you started here, and
this was your goal, and you really are well on your way.” And then, you know, for me, like, my
personal stress reliever is going to the gym, things like that, like creating that daily routine for
myself was really important.
I learned so much from Kelly, from the CDC, about maintaining my contacts and just having a
little, I had a white board and I would have a checklist of things that I wanted to do. It would say,
like, follow up with Kat Davis at this management company or whatever, and just being super
organized, and not feeling like my world was an endless thing of endless things I was supposed
to be doing. That, I felt like, for me, would bring me a lot more stress, so if I had five tangible
things that week that I needed to do to advance my career forward, or my job search forward, I
would write those on a whiteboard on my fridge and try to work through those every week, and it
made me feel like I had small victories throughout the week, even if it was just sending an email
that maybe I didn’t even get a reply to. But I felt like, OK I did that, that’s a tangible thing and
moving forward, instead of feeling just like the world is spinning around you and you should be
doing everything and there’s just no possible way you can do everything.
Kelly: Yeah, that’s so important. Giving yourself tangible goals that you can look back on and be
like I am making progress. I think that’s a really great point.
Ali: Yeah.
Kelly: Thinking back to that process, you were trying to get your foot into this industry, and
combining that with your experience now, as somebody who has made it, right, you’re at a great
level at a great position at a great company, what do you see as things people who are trying to
get into the industry or from your own personal experience, things that people should or should
not be doing with this specific industry? Is there anything in particular that stands out to you?
Ali: I would say the little things are the big things, and to piggyback off of that I always say, I’ve
probably said for the past five years, anything that I needed to know to succeed in my job as a
professional, my mom probably taught me when I was five years old, and that’s looking people
in the eye, saying thank you. I got my job, I don’t remember if Kelly remembers this, but I got
my job at the CDC because I was one of, like, two students that wrote a handwritten thank you
note after my interview, and my mom taught me that when I was five years old. I always sent
hand-written thank you notes, right, and to this day, I still do it. When I meet a radio station for
the first time, they get a handwritten letter from me at the end, and that’s a little thing, but it’s
such a big thing and it makes you feel so connected. So, those are the things that impress me. I
mean, we went, probably, in December we went to a job search, we were hiring a new
coordinator in my department, and it’s an entry level role, but it’s a really really big role for our
team to just keep us all kind of on the same page, and there’s a lot of confidential things that go
into that. We probably interviewed 20 people, and, I bet, I think I got two thank you cards, and
those really stuck out to me though because in a time when, I don’t want to speak “your
generation” and “mine” because we’re not that far apart, but in a time when those things are just
falling, and it’s just so much easier to email somebody, I get 600 emails a day, an email thank
you, although it means something, it’s a lot less impactful than getting a handwritten thank you
note. And guess what. I get to know so much about your personality based on which pattern of
stationary you choose, which is also really fun! Right?! Like, I think it just could say a lot about
you. So, I would say, in the entry level things, I think, even for me getting my first job at the
Career Center in college, to the connections I made when I first moved to Nashville, to now me
being in a hiring position, hiring specifically, entry level employees, the little things have always
been the big things, and it has been a lot less about, somebody coming in and just wowing me
with their experience, and just saying something profound industry-wise. It’s way less about that,
and more about do you have something tangible that we can work with? I have a PR degree. I
didn’t do radio, television, and film, you know, like, I didn’t know a lot about how the radio
station worked, but did I have a skillset that they could work with? Yeah, and I figured out a way
to make that applicable, and then I was the right person, so I just, I just think, and you might see
your personality as being a little thing, it’s a big thing, you know, you might see your work
experience as being a really big thing, and it’s a little thing. But, it’s just, it’s important to keep
those things in perspective, and, um, back to the basics of human interaction.
Kelly. I think that’s so important, and to add onto that, when someone meets you and they’re
interviewing you for a job, they have to like you, right, if I’m gonna have to spend eight hours a
day with you, I’m not gonna be like, ugh this person, right? I have to actually like you, so all of
the things you brought up really factor into that.
Ali: Yeah, and I think too, one 20-minute meeting with someone might be all that you have, and
you hire them on to spend eight hours a day together, and put a lot of trust in, right, so first
impressions are huge, and liking the other person is huge. And, maybe, someday that job hiring
process will change to be more involved so that we can all learn a little bit more about each
other, but right now it’s like going in to buy your first house. You walk in for ten minutes, you
have no idea if there’s an outlet in the kitchen where you need a hand mixer. You just have no
clue, you learn as you go, so it is just very, it’s really really important.
Kelly: Yeah we can’t stress that enough. They gotta like you. First impressions. And what you
said about thank you notes, we hear that from so many employers, so I love that you do that for
the stations you go to. That’s awesome. You know think about when you get real mail. It’s like,
someone took the time to put pen to paper, this is amazing, oh my gosh, like the time, the
thoughtfulness.
Ali: And go to the post office and buy stamps. Sometimes they would drop stuff off at the office,
I’ve seen that, and that’s been kind of fun too, like a little box of chocolates or something.
Kelly: Who doesn’t love chocolate, you know.
Ali: I definitely like chocolate.
Kelly: Same. So, just kind of wrapping things up, because I do want to get people the chance to
ask you questions, just generally, you know, advice, here we are, time of unknowns, you
graduated into a time of unknowns, there’s obviously a lot of parallels there. Anything that you
want to just pass along, wisdom wise, insights?
Ali: Yeah. I had a phone call yesterday with a graduating senior from the University of
Tennessee at Knoxville, and her resume got passed to me. She wants to move to Nashville, she
wants to be in the music business, and she asked for a ten minute phone call, and I was talking
to her and she said “I feel bad following up with an email with everybody, I don’t want to be
annoying.” And, the only thing annoying about your email is gonna be if the content of your
email is annoying, you know, the fact of you emailing somebody and following up and wanting
to continue a connection is not, so I love having those conversations, I think people did that for
me and I want to continue that for the next generation coming into the workforce. So, don’t be
afraid to ask the question. Kelly, I know, is telling you guys have to compose those emails, and
making sure they’re not extremely open ended. I mean, so much of that, that I learned in the
Career Center, I still use and I still maybe judge emails on, you know, if I don’t have anything to
respond to, I’m not gonna respond, you know, so I know that Kelly’s telling you guys how to
compose those emails, and you should pay attention.
That, and even if you can’t be physically present right now, if you can’t travel, if you want to
move to Nashville and you can’t just up and move to Nashville like I did. I sit in front of this
computer on Zoom all day long. I think I have six meetings on Zoom today, so there are ways, I
mean our entire company is figuring out how to work remotely, and we’re not gonna go back any
time soon, so I just encourage you to maybe think outside the box, and that, it is possible, it’s
possible to continue to make connections. My company, Big Loud, we hired a new digital, like a
graphic designer, who starts on Monday. We hired her, they hired her two weeks ago. The entire
process was on Zoom. They’ve never met her in person, and she has a full-time salary job that
starts on Monday. So, it’s possible, and, you know, there are innovative companies who want to
keep growing and keep hiring. Fortunately, I work for one of those. It might not be right for
every company, but there are pockets where you can win, and I would encourage you to focus on
the pockets where you can win and where you can get stuff done from home. We’re hiring
summer interns. I’m never gonna see them, but they’re gonna work over the summer remotely,
so why can’t that happen with an employee? It can. So, I just encourage you to keep connections,
and keep your eye on the prize, and if you’re going after something that you’re really passionate
about, I think you’ll figure out a way.
Kelly: Well, please know that once it’s safe to send you things in the mail, I’ll write you a
hand-written thank you note, so know that’s coming. Fear not.
Ali: My mail’s gonna be flooded!
Kelly: I know. You’re gonna have so many, so just keep a look out for that, but I do want to give
people the chance to ask questions, Nicole?
Student 1: Hi, I’m Nicole. I’m actually a junior PR major, and I’m looking to get into the music
industry, so I was wondering how you used your PR foundation and the skills that you learned in
Newhouse to make yourself, kind of, known about and wanted in the industry.
Ali: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I would say the thought that comes back to me the most
when I’m, like, doing my job or thinking about my career path is just overall communication, but
my PR skill that I use the most is, honest communication. And I remember, like, I don’t even
remember the name of the course anymore because I’m not, I’m not just PR all the time right
now, but it was disaster communications, whatever that word, whatever they call that course.
And I just remember, I remember thinking so much, like, companies really need to be ahead of
their mistakes, and, you know, you don’t want to just hide and not communicate because when
that happens people create their own narratives. You want to be able to create your own
narrative, and feel like that’s the skill, I think, that I come back to the most from my PR degree is
that I need to, A: become a communicator, and I need to communicate my own narrative. If I’m
not out there being my greatest ambassador, then somebody else is just making something up in
their head about me that is not gonna be true, so I need to be the most communicative, greatest
ambassador of Ali Matkosky, and make sure that everybody knows that from my mouth. So, I
feel like that’s my skill, my PR skill I come back to from my career at Newhouse, and, in the
beginning, that’s why I would set up so many meetings and have coffee. I could be a name on a
page, I could be, you know, I don’t even think Instagram even existed when I moved to
Nashville, but I could be, like, and Instagram profile, but what does that really tell them about
me? Nothing. They’re just connecting their own dots and their own narrative, and I need to be
the person creating my own narrative. And I feel like that all stemmed out of whatever that PR
course is called where I had to make a whole poster communications plan with my team on what
we would do if something went terribly wrong within our company. And it was A: being forward
and communicative first, and now, even in my job, the people that work beneath me, I tell them
all the time, you need to be overly communicative with me because if I’m not being
communicated to, then I’m not creating a narrative and it might not be true, but I have no other
option but to connect the dots in the way that I see them in front of me. So, over communication
is, like, one of the biggest things for me currently in my job and I think that all stems from my
PR degree.
Kelly: Ah, Morgan.
Student 2: Hi Ali. I actually applied to some positions and internship positions in Nashville that I
was either rejected from or the summer programs got cancelled, so I was, like, planning on
picking up and pursuing a career there and living there. Do you recommend moving there
without a position because I know you said that you spent some time there job hunting, and, in
addition to that, would companies even consider you if you’re not already located there?
Ali: Two really good questions. So, I can’t say blanket companies will not consider you if you’re
not in Nashville because we just hired a promotion coordinator on my team and we actually just
relocated her from Charlotte. But I will say that her name came to us from another company that
had interviewed her and she was their second choice, they didn’t hire her, they us her resume, we
wanted to interview her, and she, without us even knowing, decided, to be honest we didn’t even
know she was still in Charlotte, she hopped in the car and drove however, 12 hours to get to
Nashville for us to interview her, and we didn’t even know any different, and then told us that
she actually lives in Charlotte. So, it’s not impossible, but, I will say that there is such a demand
for music industry jobs, I mean, everybody wants them, they’re cool, they’re sexy, like being in
the music industry is freaking awesome, like, a lot of people want it and there’s 300 people that
they don’t have to relocate that they can meet in person that are already in Nashville, so, you
know, it’s not impossible, but I’d be lying if I said that I could have gotten the job that I got if I
was still, you know, in Skaneateles. I couldn’t have, probably. So, I would encourage you, when
the time is safe and right for you to be in Nashville. I just think a lot of the natural connections
that you would make are gonna be easier, and you could have a 30 minute coffee with somebody
on a random Tuesday that’s gonna be super beneficial to you. So, I would encourage you to do it
if it’s possible for you, and safe, but it is not impossible because I just hired a girl that lived in
Charlotte, and we relocated her, so I wouldn’t say that it’s impossible.
Student 2: Thank you.
Ali: You’re welcome.
Kelly: Macella.
Student 3: Hi Ali, my name’s Marcella, um, thank you for taking the time to come chat with us
today, um, I’m an audio arts grad student looking to enter the music industry in the marketing
sphere of things, and I’ve had a few industry experiences and internships already. My question
is, I know the touring is essentially an artist’s biggest money maker and arguably the best way to
authentically promote your artist and get fan outreach, so how is your day to day, and your
overall goals, and targeted promo adapted to the COVID world, and what can we, as newcomers
to the business, do to prepare for an entry level position in a post-COVID world that will likely
be very different?
Ali: Very good question. And, although it feels like we’ve been in COVID forever, we have to
realize it’s been, what, five or six weeks at the most. We’re still learning that. Some of our artists
are fortunate enough to have made a good living, they have their band and crew on salary, and
everybody is still being able to be paid, but many artists are not that fortunate. Probably where an
artist is still maybe making some residual income, it’s really their band and crew that have taken,
you know, a big impact, so right now the bigger wins are pretty small. We have been looking
into an insane amount of new technology. There’s this app called Looped. I probably talk to that
technology team once a day, brainstorming ways to, my job specifically is to connect the radio
station with my artist, and for radio stations, their win is to connect their listeners with my artist,
so I’m on those phone calls daily about how can we get creative using this new technology and, I
will say Looped Live is one of them, but there’s probably 15 others, but Looped has become
probably the cleanest interface that our team is looking at, so how do we connect the dots, right.
So, this week it’s just as simple as my one artist, Chris Lane, is getting on Lopped, and my one
radio station in Bakersfield California is giving away 25 meet and greet codes, and they are
connecting on the app and having a little Facetime just to keep him relevant, but then I have
another artist, his name is Hardy, and he’s fine, but his band and crew isn’t making any money,
so he’s actually getting on Looped and I think maybe charging, like, five dollars per meet and
greet, which is a Facetime call which is kinda pretty cool. So, he can get some income and he can
disseminate that out to his band and crew, so everyone is getting creative. Nobody’s jumping on
anything super quickly because we don’t know, we don’t know what we’re gonna have to
monetize in the coming months, like, there’s things I might want to give to a radio station right
now for free to give them something to connect the dots. I have a radio station last week that
called me, they called me and said, “Ali, we lost seven million dollars in seven days.” They’re
struggling and their currency is access to the artist, so I want to help them. I don’t want to give
them so many things for free that I end up hurting my artist’s business model because it could be
all they have for the rest of 2020, so it’s a daily struggle. I mean, Big Loud really cool company,
we have a publishing company, we have a record label that I worked at, we have an artist
management company is with Maverick, so a lot of our artists are also managed in-house, so one
of our managers said yesterday, “hey, we’re not even talking touring until June first. I know
there’s dates on the calendar and I know you might see somebody is coming to the amphitheater,
but we’re not even gonna readdress it again until June first.” So, it’s just changing so so much,
and if I were job searching in a post-COVID world I would say two things. One, we will get
back to the basics at some point. Artists will still find a way to get in front of fans, it just might
look a little different. We might not ever have a physical meet and greet again. You might never
get to say hi to your favorite artist in person because germs, so what’s the next best way to do
that? And I think if you just kind of keep your eye open to the newest technology, I would follow
all of your favorite artists on social, see what they’re doing. Something that I wanted to do the
other day, somebody was like, “oh, Cassidy Pope did that and she has a highlight reel on her
Instagram.” So I would just follow those people and just be in the know of how people are
changing things, like in the country format, Luke Combs has done some really cool stuff, for
example, and we’re watching that, and seeing how people are reacting, and I think if you’re
watching that and you’re educated too, then you’ll be able to have those educated conversations
with somebody post-COVID, and it will feel impressive if you care enough.
Student 3: Awesome, thank you so much.
Ali: You’re welcome.
Student 4: Hi, my name’s Annelise. I’m a junior public relations major who also wants to work
in the music industry. It was kind of asked and answered, but I was kind of just wondering, like,
before all of this, what a typical day in your life was.
Ali: So, I do radio promotion. My team of people we’re the liaison between the radio station and
our artists, right, so I’m what you would call our “national of promotion” which, if I’m a big
umbrella, then underneath my big umbrella are what you call “regionals of promotion”, they
each have a region of the country that they work with, they work with those radio stations in that
region. They might have 40 radio stations that they might talk to on a weekly basis, and they’re
talking to the program director, so at WBBS, in Syracuse it would be 104.7, his name is Rich
Lauber. Rich Lauber is the person we talk to every week, and we say, “Rich Lauber I have a
Morgan Wallen single that’s going for number one next week. I need the most spins that you can
give me. I need you to play it as many times in one week as possible,” because that’s how we get
number one singles. So, the regionals are really talking to the radio stations and having those
conversations and then also, when my artist comes to Syracuse, the regional is there making sure
Rich Lauber is having a great time at the Morgan Wallen show. So they’re having those
conversations. My job is to make sure that all five of them are firing on the same cylinder. I can’t
have Rich Lauber playing Morgan Wallen 70 times a week and then this station in Colorado
playing him five times a week because if we’re not all kind of moving and gaining together, then
I’m never gonna get a number one song, and my main job is to get a number one song. That’s
what I do. I work solely for the number one plaque on everybody’s wall. That’s my job. So, my
week starts every Monday. We get a report card every Monday, the chart, and if you don’t like
report cards every week then this isn’t the job for you. If you’re motivated by seeing something
tangible, it’s the job for you, and I would say, kind of the two ends of the spectrum are maybe
the marketing team who is kind of always working on something a little bit more ongoing and
building an artist’s brand would be the marketing team, and then my team, we have something
tangible every week. We’ve either won or lost on a Monday with a song. It either moved up the
chart or it moved down the chart, so my week consists of managing those spins, those
conversations all week long, and then, you know, regionals are the main, they’re the front line
contact, but I probably, I don’t know, talk to 15 to 20 program directors across the country every
week to kind of back them up in conversations that they’re having. And then I’m also the point
of contact, the liason, between our team and the artist or manager, so I have weekly Zooms with
each of our artists, and I talk to them about the landscape of radio, how we’re doing, answer
questions, I ask them to do the meet and greets over Looped, all of that kind of stuff, so it’s like a
tenfold job, but it’s mainly with radio stations. Radio airplay chart. Everyone wants the number
one song, so they like to talk to you about it.
Student 4: Thank you.
Student 5: Hi Ali, my name’s Elizabeth. I just wanted to say thanks so much for being with us
today. It’s a very stressful time for everybody, and, you know, very uncertain for everybody,
even professionals in the industry, you know. While we’re people looking for jobs, everyone has
families they’re worried about, and so much is going on, so I was just wondering, again, what
your thoughts might be on that.
Ali: Yeah and it’s funny I didn’t really think to draw this parallel to you guys before this
moment, but my job is to, my job is to, my job is a relationship based job, completely, 100
percent. I, if my program director doesn’t want to sit down in the same room as me, he doesn’t
want to go to dinner, she doesn’t want to go to a show with me, then I’m not winning. I’m in a
completely relationship-based job, and I’m having to do this job from this 12-by12 bedroom in
Nashville. In a pre-COVID world I travel. I travel once a week, easy. I might be in three cities in
one week. I mean, I’m gone on weekends, I’m at shows, I’m always in front of these people.
Always. Always. Always. Always. Because I need to have the benefit of the doubt making
decisions for their radio station, so my job is a relationship based job, and I’m having to figure
out how to do that from home, in front of this computer screen, in this 12-by-12 bedroom, kind
of the same way you guys are trying to figure out how to do what you’re doing from home. You
guys can’t move to Nashville to be in the industry, I can’t fly to San Jose because the program
director refuses to play my new artist because he doesn’t think she’s talented. I can’t put her and
me on a plane and be in front of him and say, “look she’s talented, she’s worthy of your time.” I
can’t do that, so I’m having to be more creative as well. I’m doing virtual happy hour with these
radio stations. We sit on Zoom, we have a margarita, we laugh with each other, I mean, we’re all
kind of in that same boat, so you’re just gonna have to get creative and even if you came to
Nashville, I couldn’t see you, right? So, even if you could be in the house, three houses down, I
wouldn’t be able to come hang out with you, so it’s almost so off the table that it’s a little
irrelevant. It’s like, yeah you’re right I couldn’t do that, but what can I do? I can talk to you on
Zoom, I can look at your socials. I have literally taken selfie videos and told my program
director, “hey here are my three music priorities this week,” and just sent them to them, just to
break up the monotony of an email or a text or even a Zoom at this point. We’re on Zooms a lot,
and, you know, we’re all kind of in the same boat, we’re doing the same thing, and we’re all
trying to do it from home, so just be encouraged that you’re not the only one and that everyone
feels it. I don’t want to tell you to not feel sorry for yourself or something, but like, at the same
time, we’re doing the same thing, we’re all kind of doing the same thing, so don’t be discouraged
that you’re the only one trying to navigate relationships and a job hunt in a new format, or, you
know, in a new world.
Student 6: Hi Ali, I’m Andrea. I just have a question for you. I’m from Syracuse, so I’m still here
in Syracuse, and I really want to move to Nashville. That’s my plan right after my lease is up
here in August, so I was wondering, when you did take that leap to Nashville, what was the
biggest thing that you did, do you think, moving forward to get to that spot where you wanted to
be down there. Like, what was your search like in terms of finding an apartment, kind of just
getting settled in Nashville.
Ali: So, I was at our house, and sitting there, our family friend was there, and this was right after
graduation, and I am a motivated, driven person, and after graduation all I knew was that I didn’t
want to work at Edelman in New York City. And there’s nothing bad about that, it just wasn’t for
me, and I just knew that. So, I was sitting there and our family friend just said, “well what do you
want to do?” And it almost just like, I had thought about it so much, but never said it, and I said,
“I want to move to Nashville, and I want work in the music business,” and just saying it out loud
was half the battle, and he said, “oh well I know a few people, I’ll connect them to you.” So,
before I moved, I emailed all of them, and they emailed back and one person I got on the phone
with and she said, “do you have any questions?” and I was like, “well yeah, like, where should I
live?” and she was like, “well a lot of people live in this area of town,” so I sight unseen I just
got an apartment, I just, whatever, I figured if I didn’t like it I would move to a new one in a
year, you know? So if you know somebody, me? Email me and ask me what part of town you
should live in, and I will tell you. I will at least tell you what part of town to not live in.
Student 6: Thank you.
Ali: You’re welcome. And then just, literally I had a Nissan Altima, I put everything I owned in
it, I started driving. I didn’t think too much. I just had said it, and I felt like, OK I have four
connections, that’s enough, OK well I’ll just sign this lease for a year, that’s enough, and I’ll just
move down to Nashville and figure it out when I get there. And the day after, say I got to
Nashville on a Wednesday, Thursday I walked in and got a waitressing job because I had to pay
my bills, and then from there I took it a day at a time, and kind of planned it all out. So, I would
just say if you want to do it, when the time is right obviously, I didn’t move to Nashville until
August after I graduated, for the record, I graduated in May, Nashville had a huge flood that
May, things were weird, I just waited, I spent the summer in Syracuse, and I nannied, and then I
moved to Nashville in August.
Student 6: Alright, thank you.
Ali: You’re welcome.
Kelly: Well thank you Ali, so much, for being here. We so appreciate your time.
Ali: Thank you guys! I’m really excited about so many people wanting to move to Nashville
because I feel like a lot of people see the music industry and they want to move to New York or
LA, and there are just really really cool things happening in Nashville, you don’t have to be in
the country music industry. We have a big rock scene, a big indie rock scene, if you want to be in
the Christian music scene, it’s here, and so it just makes me really excited to see so many people
havean interest in Nashville.
