Courtney E. Smith

Courtney Smith has more than a decade of experience working in the music industry. She left MTV after spending 8 years as a music programmer and manager of label relations, where she was one of the executives who decided which videos went into rotation on all of MTV's 20 music platforms, including programming MTV2 Subterranean (the only nationally broadcast indie rock video show) and mtvU (a 24-hour college music channel) and created launch programs for emerging artists like mtvU's Woodie Awards. She has played an important role in deciding what music entered the pop cannon for the last decade.

Smith specialized in grooming upcoming bands and was an early champion of, and has worked closely with, Death Cab for Cutie, the Shins, Franz Ferdinand, Vampire Weekend, Arctic Monkeys, Lykke Li, Bat for Lashes, and more. She is credited with getting MTV to expose and add to their rotation more adventurous music from bands like No Age, Klaxons, Justice, and She & Him. In addition to programming MTV2 Subterranean, she was executive editor and author of the Subterranean blog for three years, from its inception.

The author has spoken as a music authority on panels at the New York CMJ festival, the by:Larm Music Festival in Norway, and on a Twilight Convention on a panel about the music of the Twilight saga (to keep it real).

RECORD COLLECTING FOR GIRLS is her first book.