Chelsea Paga
Manager, Financial Planning & Analysis, 313 Presents
Chelsea Paga is making an impact bridging music and data.
“There is such a focus on best utilizing all the available data and information these days, but I don’t believe that solely focusing on the numbers will necessarily lead to the best outcome,” Paga said. “This industry has so many nuances that cannot be captured in a spreadsheet, so qualitative factors have to be taken into consideration as well.”
Paga, 34, grew up in the Detroit metro playing piano, guitar, singing and performing in school band. She started going to concerts as soon as she was old enough, but never saw music as a career path. In college at Michigan State University, she gravitated to Media Arts and Technology and hoped for a career in television production.
She didn’t want to move to Los Angeles or New York and wasn’t interested in television news. She applied at Freedom Hill Amphitheatre (now Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre), which was reopening under the management of FunFest Productions in 2013 after a five-year hiatus.
“I applied to be a stagehand thinking that my sound and lights skills in TV production would translate well to live concerts,” Paga said. “They offered me a production internship working at the amphitheater and the festivals that the company produced, so I spent that summer learning the ropes of the industry working as a production assistant or runner for every concert at Freedom Hill and their three-weekend long festivals with national bands each night.”
AEG was booking the venue at the time, and Paga made an impression and led to her becoming the production assistant at Detroit’s Masonic Temple and Royal Oak Music Theatre in Royal Oak, Michigan.
“The owner of FunFest really helped me explore potential opportunities within the industry,” offered Paga. “Throughout my years there I got to be the bookkeeper, marketing manager and even dabbled in rigging and sales at one point, but quickly learned those were not the paths for me.”
She gravitated to finance and accounting and returned to college at Wayne State University to earn a Masters of Business Administration, concentrating in finance and information systems management. After graduation in 2018 she started with startup 313 Presents as an event accountant, which she called “a huge milestone.”
“I had finally found my short-term dream job settling events, getting to work with promoters and tours but focusing on accounting, which is my strong suit compared to production,” she said. “This job brought two of my strongest interests, math and music, together.”
Working her way up through the company, Paga marvels at the advances in communication and technology.
“I always love hearing stories of how shows were advanced back before email and the internet, when tech packs were being faxed or snail mailed,” said Paga. “Information is so much more accessible these days, making it possible to build upon what having near real-time data can bring to the industry.”
