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Core Courses

Management of Music Organizations
Examines approaches used to manage and oversee various music organizations, including managing change, decision-making, negotiation and presentation skills, and assessing management style. Successful music industry leaders must be well grounded in traditional management knowledge and practices, yet at the same time appreciate the unique aspects of the creative industries.

Intellectual Property for Music Management
Legal Issues for Music Management focuses on the regulatory frameworks and converging media law. Content includes contracts, licensing, standards and best practices in intellectual property both at a national and international level.

Marketing Strategies in the Music Industry
Emphasizes application of strategic planning in marketing to achieve competitive advantage in the Music Industry. Examines the role of strategic planning in developing effective marketing programs that enhance the overall performance of a music organization. Specific topics include consumer behavior, market segmentation, targeting, customer equity, brand equity, brand positioning, marketing research, product policy, pricing strategy, distribution channels, marketing communications, global branding, new product development, and social marketing

Financial Management in the Music Industry
An examination of financial reporting and decision making in the music industry. Gives students the opportunity to become proficient in the analysis of financial statements for the purpose of predicting the future performance and growth of a firm.

Music Industry Research Methodology
Provides an opportunity for students to develop and enhance their research skills. Success as a music industry manager often hinges on the ability to find solutions effectively and efficiently. In addition to covering the creation of various sources of tax authority, also introduces students to a variety of research resources. Students are required to complete written research reports

Music Electives

Strategy and Analysis in the Music Industry
Provides a survey of the theory and practice of planning and evaluation as it relates to music organizations. The course includes development of critical issues, goals, strategies, outcomes research planning, and protocol development. Emphasis is placed on realistic business examples
and the processes managers use to analyze problems.

Leadership in the Music Industry
Explores the concepts of leadership and examines leadership experiences and potential as they relate to the field of music and the entertainment industry.

Negotiations in the Music Industry
This course is designed for students who seek to learn how to become effective negotiators in managerial settings. The course is largely experiential, which means that students learn the theory, concepts, and models underlying good practice inductively they learn by doing and then reflecting on their effectiveness. Simulated negotiations span the range of situations managers will encounter.

Advanced Negotiations in the Music Industry
A continuation of Negotiations in Music Industry course. The course will develop negotiation skills through a variety of scenarios. Topics include multi-party and multi-issue negotiations, hard-bargaining, interest-base negotiations, arbitration and mediation.
•    Prerequisite: Negotiations in Music Industry

Global Music Management
This course provides an introduction to the financial, legal, cultural and social contexts of conducting business in the global market place. The course provides conceptual tools for analyzing how governments and a variety of social and economic institutions influence competition among firms embedded in different national settings. Issues addressed include: how to meet the business challenges arising from international social and environmental concerns and technical innovation. Strategic options for entering and competing in foreign markets; the
growing role of alliances with partners from rapidly developing economies; the importance of locating operations in the most advantageous countries; and the special circumstances of competing in emerging markets are explored.

New Venture Development in the Music Industry
Explores the process of opportunity recognition, starting, and scaling an enterprise from an idea and business plan into a company. The essence of entrepreneurship is new combinations — of ideas, resources, partners, and customers in the effort to create new market space. The course will cover (1) opportunity recognition and evaluation: developing a startup idea involving technology, a product, or a service; (2) crafting a promising execution strategy and validating market potential; (3) developing a credible business plan and delivering effective presentations; (4) building a team of employees, partners, and investors; and (5) marketing, sales, and operations.

Popular Music and Media
This course will examine the commercial, critical and cultural intersections of popular music and media.  Issues to be covered will include: theories of the mediation of popular music; analysis of mediated forms of popular music (e.g., radio, film, TV, music video; video games); notions of genre and style; criticism and canonization; fiction and non-fiction music texts.

History of Music Industry
This course aims to contextualize contemporary music industry practices into a wider historical and theoretical framework.  It will trace the origins of modern music industries from medieval Europe to the New World to Vaudeville, Tin Pan Alley to the so-called ‘Rock and Roll era’ of the 1950s.  Contextualizing music industry in this way enables deeper understanding of how traditional business, legal, political and economic systems directly and indirectly influence creativity and creative practice.

Music, Technology and Popular Culture
This course seeks to establish a sociological/historical framework between popular music, popular culture, technology and music industry.  It will analyse selected mediated sounds and images representing different eras within popular music and popular culture to address the role of technology in the production, distribution and consumption of popular music and popular culture. It will also explore the historical, legal, political, and technical issues surrounding key popular music and popular culture developments with an aim to anticipate trends in the continuing evolution of technology in the popular music/culture industries.

Advanced Music Industry Research Methodology
Offers students the opportunity to prepare a professional research paper under the close supervision of a scholar interested in students’ particular research areas
•    Prerequisite: Music Industry Research Methodology
•    Required of Students completing Thesis option

Capstone Project
The capstone project will demonstrate the competence to identify a problem or create a project germane to the evolving field in music management, and to produce a working product that is executed in a systematic manner using research and management tools. Students may select a project within their area of expertise including, developing the market entry strategy of a new music website, identifying channels to market a new musical act, etc. The capstone project must be approved by the Program Director.

Thesis
The master’s thesis in music industry involves independent research on an approved topic judged by a faculty committee and under the supervision of one faculty member. The thesis requires students to develop, design and complete an original research project.
•    Prerequisite: permission of advisor
•    Repeatable without limit

Thesis Continuation
Provides students who require additional time beyond the one semester allocated with the opportunity to complete their thesis.