How One Job Listing Changed The Course of My Career
Sarah Kloboves, Content and Marketing Manager at Chartmetric, shares her story of how she came to live her life in the music industry.
Five years ago I was studying pre-med in college. It was in my junior year and I’d already started to prepare for taking the MCAT. At that point, medical school seemed like the only logical path forward. But I was miserable…
The funny thing is that I always knew I wanted to work in music. I can even remember making a post on my finsta (every gen-z-er’s personal diary at the time), about how my dream was to curate Spotify playlists and specialise in music data.
So why on earth did I not pursue music from the start? To be honest, I had no idea it was even possible.
Growing up in rural, midwest America, all I knew was to follow the traditional route that pretty much everyone else followed: school teacher, nurse, or if you really have the brains for it, you could try your hand at being a doctor. I was relatively good at science, so I figured why the heck not. I was also 17, with absolutely no clue who I truly was or what it meant to invest in your entire future at the collegiate level.
School was fine, I got relatively okay grades, although O-chem was quite abysmal. The problem was, I never really found something that I felt passionate enough about to do for the rest of my life.
After three years of jumping from one idea to another, I started to panic toward the end of my junior year. With a pre-medicine degree, there aren’t many options if you’re not planning to go to graduate school, and I was terrified to commit.
For context, my junior was also set during peak COVID times, so most days were spent online. With my newfound time, I started doing a bit of digging around on music industry professions. I vividly remember Googling, “Who is the person responsible for finding new music?”—and being completely blown away when I came across the A&R job description.
I couldn’t believe a role like that actually existed.
The more I researched, the more I uncovered the different sides of the music industry, and to my surprise, I found out my own college even had a programme dedicated to it.
Instantly, I knew I’d regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t at least try. With medical school applications on the horizon, I decided to pause everything—admissions, testing, all of it—and give myself space to explore this new path. I started having honest conversations with professors and friends, asking whether it was even possible to pivot so late in the game.
What I eventually realised is that your degree matters a lot less than you’d think. And since I couldn’t afford to take out more loans or start from scratch, I made peace with graduating as a pre-med student, while enrolling in music business courses on the side.
Most importantly, I decided that I would work to gain as much experience as I could. Most internships were online at that time, so I was able to accomplish a lot while still living in my small college town in Ohio. In total, I completed five internships in just a year’s time: two in PR, two in digital marketing, and one in journalism. All were unpaid.
It was a pretty miserable era, to be honest. Unpaid work on top of schoolwork, all on top of off-campus jobs to actually make money. I was utterly burnt out, and many nights I spent terrified that it would all be for nothing. If you asked me how I got through it, I wouldn’t even have any advice. Sometimes there’s literally nothing left to do but just keep going.
A month before graduation, I was interning at a nonprofit called #iVoted—a concert series aimed at boosting voter turnout by hosting shows on election night. It was here that I was first introduced to Chartmetric. Emily White, the visionary behind #iVoted, used the platform to book artists based on real-time data showing who was trending in specific cities. As luck would have it, Chartmetric was hiring a Marketing Intern for the summer, and Emily kindly put in a good word for me. A few weeks later, I packed up everything and moved to New York City to start my new job.
A lot of times I can’t really comprehend how it all happened so fast. It took just about a year’s time from when I decided to make the change to when I got the job offer. Truly insane.
I used to struggle a lot with imposter syndrome, wondering if I just “happened” to get lucky to land a position for a company that has allowed me to grow in so many ways. I felt guilty a lot of times too, especially when I would see others struggle to find their place in this hell-scape of a job market.
I still feel it even today, but thankfully I’ve come to realise that this is simply where I was meant to be. I love my job. I am good at my job. I work hard at my job, and I worked hard to get there. Nothing can ever change that or take it away from me, and I’m really happy to be in a place where I truly believe those things about me now.
If there are any takeaways from my experience, it would probably be two things.
First, education and resources for young students in this industry is crucial, and we all need to do our part in giving back and investing towards them. This can be in schools, but also in meeting young professionals where they are.
For example, I didn’t realise a career in music was possible because I never saw anyone like me doing it. Coming from a region that is majority lower in socioeconomic status, I empathise for the countless other groups and minorities that might also struggle to understand what’s truly available out there.
Secondly, and this is something I still have to remind myself of from time to time: never stop putting yourself outside of your comfort zone. In an industry that is 98% networking, this was arguably the most important thing I did for myself, and ultimately, got me to where I am today.
It was uncomfortable to drop my med school trajectory, but it was worth it.
It was uncomfortable to work unpaid internship after unpaid internship, but it was worth it.
It was uncomfortable to move to New York City completely on my own, but it was worth it.
All of these uncomfortable things have allowed me to grow in ways I never thought possible, and everyday I’m thankful I had the courage to try.
