Ian Wheeler Lecture

Michael Kamens

3/19/09

Ian Wheeler Lecture

Ian Wheeler is a young man who is currently successful in the music and design world. Hearing him talk about his rise from no money to success is fascinating and encouraging as someone who is about to graduate and look for employment.

He said that Partisan Records started as a record label. He became the manager through indie outlaw. He owns two companies and owns another as well. During his first two years with his company he mailed packages out to people and other companies because marketing sends out 10-15,000 packages.

One of his popular designs was a vinyl cover that had three guys on the beach with two girls holding machine guns. Some people at the time thought it was bad, but most thought it was good and interesting. Either way it was an eye catcher which was on of the key reasons it came though. He said one of the key reasons it sold was because it gave off the feeling of being, “so good its right”. He said that he gets paid $6 for every vinyl he sells and his band gets $3. He later discussed the difficulty of selling digital booklets because deciding what the content is going to be is tough. His bands music has been in some movies and t.v. such as the hit show, “Grey’s Anatomy”.

A big portion of his lecture was instructing students on what to do, to succeed in the entertainment industry. He stressed how important it was to intern. He also made it clear how important it is to go to parties and network; form relationships. He said that most of the time all you need is information from other people in terms of who is hiring for what job and to get the best information is to start up conversations and form relationships with them.

Listening to what Ian said was very eye opening. It was great to hear someone who is in the entertainment industry talk about how successful he is, it gives me hope that I could do the same. He doesn’t make it sound easy or simple, just realistic. What he says you have to do can be hard, but definitely not impossible.