ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ

Ever since he was young, music has played a vital role for Giovanni Brooks ’25. He hopes to combine his passion for music with his studies at ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ and his experiences to pursue a career in the music industry.

Brooks — who goes by Gio — is a graduate student in the Harpur/STEM 4+1 MBA program in the School of Management (SOM). After completing his undergraduate degree in economics through the Harpur College of Arts and Sciences, Brooks aimed to further his studies in graduate school where he is focusing on business analytics.

On campus, he has been strictly music focused. He played French horn in the University Symphony Orchestra for three years. He then became part of the , which is the only production club on campus. There, he got the chance to produce music as well as help people with music theory, composition and expressing themselves through music.

In his senior year, he became president of BPM. He also worked as an administrative assistant for the School of Management, where he gained knowledge in both administrative support and office coordination.

He has experience through two internships with Universal Music Group, where he worked in merchandising for Bravado as well as in publicity operations for Verve Label Group. He most recently worked with the Noel Pointer Foundation, where he gained experience in music education by working with young students in underserved communities.

He shared more about his experiences from ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ and his internships as well as his hopes for his future career.

You hope to pursue a career in the music industry. What made you interested in this career path?

I have been involved in music since I was 8 years old. I absolutely live for music. I wake up and listen to it, I go to sleep listening to it — it’s in my blood.

I got the opportunity to think about a career path in the music industry when I got an internship my sophomore year through Universal Music Group. It was for retail production at Bravado, which is the merchandising arm for the company. I was sitting in my dorm room when I saw the internship on Indeed. I thought it would be worth a shot to apply.

After some digital interviews, I made it to the actual final interview with the hiring manager. We ended up talking for 30 minutes about my experience folding clothes at Hollister and his past experience working at Abercrombie, as well as touching lightly on my coursework I had done up to that point. As a sophomore, I was worried that I wasn’t fully qualified. What I learned from that is that no experience is ever too small at all. You never know where life’s going to take you. You just have to be open to experience.

What has your School of Management experience been like, and how can a master’s degree help with your career goals?

My SOM experience has been great! The SOM Career Services team is also the perfect resource for students. They offer walk-in and drop-in hours just to go over your resume or cover letters. The advisors are outstanding and specialized in different areas for different student needs. They have a wide variety of events for career week. They always prioritize their students, and you feel like you’re getting taken care of there.

My master’s degree is going to help me because the music industry is moving more toward data. Companies are living and dying by how they utilize the data available to them. The reason why Spotify is so big today is because they are a data company before a music company. I could talk for hours on how Spotify’s algorithms work and how they use millions of data points through user playlists, listen times, specific audio features and more. That’s how you bring data in — you can’t do that by just looking at the chart.

I’m not trying to say that music should be all about data, but data does help when you’re trying to see what the listeners are looking for. I think that a master’s degree in analytics is one of the best introductions to this type of research and career.

What is your data analytics concentration all about?

The reason I chose data is because it’s booming. Everybody’s talking about data — data’s everywhere. Every app or website that you open collects vast amounts of data And that is, I think, where the future is moving, especially with artificial intelligence and how AI is going to be able to leverage data. There is going to be high demand for professionals that know how to leverage both AI and data to create good outcomes for businesses.

The data analytics concentration teaches you how to leverage that data and gives you the tools to succeed — it’s not easy. The program focuses on leveraging Python, SQL, and Excel to analyze data with a focus on data-driven decision-making.

Additonally the program offers cool electives in machine learning, AI and statistics for deeper analysis. I think it’s a great program for people who like problem-solving and digging in deep to figure out how and why something is happening. It’s one of the most future-proofed jobs out there.

Can you tell me more about your internship experiences?

My two internships during the summers of my sophomore and junior year were under the Universal Music Group. The first one was with the retail production team at Bravado. They work as the operations behind the scenes, getting all of the tour merch that you see for artists on their websites, in the stadiums, in retail stores worldwide. Bravado works on getting designs through, getting them approved by the artists and getting them shipped out to stores. That was intellectually challenging work because it was a lot of Excel and project tracking, but it was very rewarding.

My biggest project from that experience was working for the The Weeknd on his Samra Origins product launch with Blue Bottle Coffee. He named it after his mom, and it was a project to bring awareness to Ethiopia’s heritage as the birthplace of coffee. I was in constant contact with The Weeknd’s brand manager, getting that chance to work with him to perfect the merchandise. I saw him on tour in May, and they were advertising the Samra Origins collection. I got to say that I was a part of that.

I also worked on a project for Olivia Rodrigo with her GUTS album release and getting merchandise out for her music video. That was really big. I worked on projects for the Rolling Stones and got their stuff out to Target as well. That internship taught me so much about time management and communication and staying on top of multiple different things.

The following summer, I got a chance to work at the Verve Label Group, which is the classics and jazz arm of UMG. I am a big classics and jazz guy. It felt like a culmination of my life’s musical experience so far. I never thought I would find myself working in merchandising, but getting there was really instrumental in getting me into the label that I wanted to be at.

So, I reapplied. I checked off that I was a former UMG intern, which puts you at the top of the pile. Then, I interviewed for the publicity intern position. When I got into the building in June that summer, the coordinator that I was working under told me that one of the reasons I was selected for the position was because I had sent a thank you note after!

Most of my work was getting press context through newspapers like The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and through editors and journalists to have them cover our artists. We were trying to break newer artists that have smaller fan bases, so they need the press to gain legitimacy.

I would research even small magazines and writers to cover our artists. I would have sheets upon sheets of different independent writers from different areas, along with bigger writers from The New York Times that maybe covered a jazz artist in the past and could cover one of our new jazz records that’s coming out.

Now, I have a new perspective on smaller artists, and I’m so grateful that I got a chance to work there and be a part of giving those artists the opportunities.

You also worked with the Noel Pointer Foundation. What did you do there?

The Noel Pointer Foundation (NPF) was incredible. It is a nonprofit in Brooklyn that teaches music education to kids from underrepresented communities. That is what I live for, because I think quality music education is why I am the person who I am today.

Through the foundation, I got the chance to be a piano teacher for the kids in the summer program. It was great because I got to work with the introductory piano kids, which are the 5- to 8-year-olds, and their excitement always brought a smile to my face.

I was able to teach them how to express themselves through music and how to love being at the keyboard. They all had so much fun playing with the piano and dancing around with their classmates. I remember some kids would be so excited to come in and that would warm my heart. That’s what I live for.

What is the most important thing you’ve learned at Binghamton, and how will it help your future career?

Binghamton has been great in terms of getting myself out there and finding new opportunities and experiences. In my sophomore year, I discovered the Music Production Club, which allowed me to expand into what it’s like to produce music. I ended up being president of that club two years later and even had big artists and producers come in and talk to us.

My experiences at Binghamton taught me how to be more open to opportunities and to do things out of my comfort zone. Send that LinkedIn message and apply to that job you feel you might not be fully qualified for, because you never know what’s going to happen.

No experience is ever too small. Because of how connected the world is today, being open to experience is so meaningful.

I thought I was going to be an SOM student when I first got to Binghamton, but I decided to stick with economics. That gave me a chance to be more open to experiences I had never considered before.

Now, I find myself looking back and thinking: why would I want it any other way?