Finn McKenty

Finn McKenty is an American marketing strategist, music commentator, writer and graphic designer who currently runs the YouTube channel The Punk Rock MBA and is director of marketing at the online education platform URM Academy. Previously, he was executive producer at CreativeLive's "Music & Audio" channel and, under the persona Sergeant D, wrote articles in MetalSucks and Stuff You Will Hate.[1][2]

Early life

Finn McKenty grew up in Seattle, Washington.[3] He started going to hardcore punk shows in December 1989 and began making zines in 1992 in order to talk about bands which "deserved more attention", according to him.[4] His fanzines received positive reviews from Maximumrocknroll, Punk Planet and HeartattaCk, which praised their interviews with underground powerviolence and grindcore bands, photographs and graffiti art.[5][6][7][8] At eighteen he relocated to Cleveland, Ohio.[3] McKenty studied at the University of Cincinnati.[9]

Career

After graduating, McKenty did strategic design at a product development consulting firm and worked for several companies, including Swiffer and Febreze.[9] He also created videos for Quiksilver, DC Shoes, among other brands in the sports publication Flo.[10] Around 2009, he went on to Abercrombie & Fitch where he worked in product design, at some point supervising factories in Asia, and then continued as their marketing production coordinator for several years.[11][12] Along with his industrial design career, he kept writing in blogs and publications such as Decibel and Terrorizer for approximately a decade.[13][14] In 2019, he said that "the common thread through all [I have done] is hardcore".[15]

CreativeLive

In May 2013, McKenty co-launched and became the executive producer of the "Music & Audio" channel at CreativeLive, an online education platform which broadcasts courses by artists.[4][12] During his tenure, the channel mostly tackled DIY production of heavy metal, especially progressive metal, and electronic music.[16] He helped to host courses by Kurt Ballou, Andrew Wade, Steve Evetts, Matt Halpern of Periphery and Eyal Levi.[12][17] Ballou's course of production brought more than 10.000 live viewers.[16]

URM Academy

For around a year and a half, McKenty was a collaborator of URM Academy, an online education platform which focuses on producers, and in September 2017 joined them as director of marketing.[18][19] URM Academy offers multitracks from albums by diverse heavy bands such as A Day to Remember, Meshuggah, Opeth, Lamb of God and Bring Me the Horizon, and at the end of every month the producers of those albums do livestream sessions teaching how they mixed them.[20]

The Punk Rock MBA

In June 2015, McKenty established the website The Punk Rock MBA whose objective is to promote "career, business + life advice for the DIY community".[21] In July 2018, he began uploading YouTube videos primarily analyzing the music industry with a special focus on rock and heavy metal subgenres. Billboard praised the channel for its "deep research and endearing DIY production". By June 2019, The Punk Rock MBA had over 100.000 subscribers on YouTube.[19]

Stuff You Will Hate

In March 2009, under the persona Sergeant D, McKenty launched the comedy website Stuff You Will Hate which focused on satires of the heavy metal and hardcore punk subcultures and their trends.[22] It became an "internet phenomenon among metal and hardcore fans".[23] He also began to collaborate with comedy website Something Awful[24] and heavy metal outlet MetalSucks.[25] His writing alternated between comic and serious articles, the former, on occasions, featuring a deliberately provocative style.[25]

Stuff You Will Hate was praised by the Chicago Reader,[26] Vice,[23] and NPR, which named one of Sergeant D's articles the best heavy metal writing of 2010.[25] According to Sean Wright of WVUM, Sergeant D posts "brought back the spirit of satire-fanzines from the 90’s such as The Grimoire of Exalted Deeds".[2] Stuff You Will Hate closed in December 2015.[27]

gollark: It causes insanity and problems™.
gollark: It's not a very *good* drug.
gollark: Personally, I worship Athe.
gollark: Hmm, so it's particularly useless to you, then.
gollark: If god's plan explains whatever happens retroactively, it is entirely useless as a model to explain anything.

References
  1. Rj Frometa (January 4, 2016). "Bayside & Ice Nine Kills To Perform at Launch Music Conference!". Vents Magazine. Archived from the original on January 4, 2016. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
  2. Wright, Sean (November 16, 2016). "How To Get Totally Banned From Metalsucks Comment Section. A step-by-step look into their own Liberal hypocrisy". Esoterica Codex. Archived from the original on June 8, 2019. Retrieved June 15, 2019.
  3. Harkins 2018, 5:24-5:31, 5:51-5:55 and 7:39-7:45.
  4. Narvaja, Norm (July 2015). "Know Your Lifer". Alternative Press. p. 16. Archived from the original on May 25, 2019. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
  5. "Between the Lions". Maximumrocknroll. No. 159. Internet Archive. August 1996. p. 153. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
  6. "Between the Lions". Maximumrocknroll. No. 168. Internet Archive. May 1997. p. 153. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
  7. Gratzer, Ryan (1998). "'zine reviews". HeartattaCk. No. 18. p. 59. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
  8. Conell, Jim (March–April 1998). "Fanzine Reviews". Punk Planet. No. 23. p. 138. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
  9. Murphy 2019, 5:09-5:16 and 5:27-5:38.
  10. Murphy 2019, 25:16-25:34.
  11. Murphy 2019, 7:39-7:45 and 8:22-8:46.
  12. Glaser, Anthony (April 3, 2014). "CreativeLive's Experts Educate Thousands with Web-Based Technology (Company Profile)". Substream Magazine. Archived from the original on May 5, 2014. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
  13. Murphy 2019, 24:01-24:11.
  14. "Finn McKenty". Partysmasherinc.com. Archived from the original on January 12, 2016. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
  15. Murphy 2019, 5:43-5:50.
  16. Alfano, Chris (December 17, 2014). ""There's no such thing as 'too detailed'" – an Interview with CreativeLive's Finn McKenty". Gear Gods. Archived from the original on December 28, 2014. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
  17. Kinzie, Angela (June 6, 2014). "Spotlight: CreativeLive And Their Online Classroom". New Noise Magazine. Archived from the original on August 9, 2014. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
  18. Harkins 2018, 47:06-47:28.
  19. Olivier, Bobby (June 7, 2019). "'It's Not a Songwriting Contest': Branding Expert (And New YouTube Star) Finn McKenty on Rock's Big Image Problem". Billboard.com. Archived from the original on June 8, 2019. Retrieved June 8, 2019.
  20. Murphy 2019, 9:00-10:21.
  21. "IN EFFECT CATCHES UP WITH DUTCH HARDCORE BAND VITAMIN X... 20 PLUS YEARS IN THE GAME AND SOME GOOD STORIES ALONG THE WAY!". In Effect. July 28, 2018. Archived from the original on July 13, 2019. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
  22. Rosenberg, Axl (June 23, 2009). "OTHER WEBERNET GOODNESS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT". MetalSucks. Archived from the original on October 27, 2010. Retrieved June 29, 2019.
  23. Foster, Robert (August 15, 2012). "Give Scene Kids A Sense Of Humor". Noisey. Vice Media. Archived from the original on June 15, 2019. Retrieved June 15, 2019.
  24. "Andrew "Garbage Day" Miller". Something Awful. 2010. Archived from the original on December 30, 2013. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
  25. Gotrich, Lars (December 30, 2010). "The Year In Music: 2010's Best Writing About Metal". NPR. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved June 17, 2019.
  26. Raymer, Miles (November 5, 2009). "Why I Love Stuff You Will Hate". Chicago Reader. Archived from the original on September 6, 2011. Retrieved June 16, 2019.
  27. Frank, Max (December 16, 2015). "R.I.P. Stuff You Will Hate (sad post)". MetalSucks. Archived from the original on December 19, 2015. Retrieved June 16, 2019.

Works cited
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