A day in the life of an employee at a record company is spent working for musicians that want help in improving their careers. In fact, there is a local company in Kansas City created by rapper Tech N9ne called Strange Music Inc. Former Ray-Pec student Kris Rangel is now an intern at this company.

“My main responsibilities as an intern are to create promotional videos as well as live show footage together for social media sites. They give me external hard drives with footage from shows that I am responsible for cutting and placing to music while also adjusting the coloring of the footage to make it look more appealing. I also put the flags up every morning,” said Rangel.

Strange Music Inc. was having a casting call for the music video No K and Rangel was interested in being an extra.

“I had no intentions of attempting to be an intern because it was by pure accident. When I was being asked about my special skills I told them I had none however i was self taught in video and photo editing. The man conducting the questioning is the head of the video department and asked me to step outside and wait for him.  He then comes out and explains they are in need of editors and if i would be interested in an internship. I, of course said absolutely,”said Rangel.

It is as though Rangel was simply in the right place at the right time, finding the job almost purely by luck.

“Strange Music has been my favorite music label since i was around 6 years old. I had a strong interest and passion for video editing so to combine that with being able to learn/work with Strange Music was a dream come true,“ said Rangel.

Rangel’s coworker, Trey Swager’s role is to create visual content in anyway he is needed.

“Examples are editing promotional videos, recording behind the scenes in the booth, and being a grip on bigger music video sets,” said Swager.

Employees are productive everyday in order to help local musicians become successful in their individual careers.

“Day to day operations vary but a typical day would be spent editing my current assignment. While editing during the day you never know when another assignment will pop up, like someone visiting an artist in the studio and you have to jump up, grab the camera and go,” said Swager.

Despite all of this, record companies may actually be at something of a risk, as less and less people have been showing interest in being signed. This can affect a record company employee because it can cause companies to lose money and then employees can lose their jobs.

“I think in the rap industry specifically, mainstream rap is watered down to the point where the real lyricists don’t want to be a part of a major label. That being said the music industry gets smaller and smaller every year, so I’m sure the numbers would show less people signing these days,” said Swager.

Artists have been leaning more towards the idea of being “indie” or “independent” meaning they would rather not be signed to a major record or even not signed at all, putting major labels at risk and the people who work there. In fact, record labels can actually help improve a musician’s career.

“Labels can help an artist with project management and marketing that a self promoting artist could miss out on. Everything from having radio programmers listen to the tracks to having the best music video possible helps promote the artist. Some of those things can be missed without a label,” said Swager.

In general, record labels can be vital in advancing a musician’s career so a day in the life of an employee can consist of a variety of things which help the company’s clients.