Music Business and Arts Management BA Honours

Course content

What will you study on the BA Music Business and Arts Management?

The BA Music Business and Arts Management degree combines a rich selection of areas over its three years of studies. Modules such as Managing Arts Projects, Introduction the Music Industries, and Music Contracts & Copyrights help lay the foundations, while more specialised aspects of the course develop the knowledge and skills you'll need to deal with the business and legal implications of the music and arts industries.

Modules

This module provides an overview of the music industries, principally in the sectors of recording, publishing, live music and management. You will develop your understanding of related roles such as A&R, marketers, managers, publishers, agents, promoters and administrators, to gain a broad-based understanding of contemporary issues and practices.

This module introduces arts management through the production of a range of arts and music projects. Drawing on arts management, event management and project studies, the module will use a range of practical and theoretical approaches to build up the knowledge and skills needed to conceptualise, plan, finance and manage commercial and subsidised small-scale music and arts projects.

This module provides introductory study of contracts and copyrights in the music and cultural industries. Analysis of historical and contemporary conditions across various industry sectors, genres and territories offers students a theoretical background upon which to develop practical skills appropriate to recording, publishing, arts administration, management and agency.

This module encourages critical thought about music, musicians and composers. It takes the convergence of two topics the cultural industries and music history ­ to develop understanding of music's social function, music aesthetics, approaches to music criticism, cultural modernism, and music as a collaborative art. It also provides academic study skills and opportunities to reflect on and advance budding professional and scholarly development, laying a solid foundation for further study and practice.

This module aims to enable you to gain an advanced understanding of the development, structure and systems employed by the live music industry. It develops your critical understanding of the impact of live music markets in local and international arenas, from small venues to international tours and festivals. It also enables you to critique the contemporary role of live music in the promotion and development of an artist's career and to examine the interplay of agents, promoters, managers and salient organisations across the industry.

This module aims to develop your knowledge of the music industries, with a specific focus on entrepreneurship. Such issues are particularly important to those intending to launch a company of their own, or to self-manage and/or self-release, but will also be relevant to those intending to work for an existing company ­ within the music industries or beyond. You will work on a live case study of a music business, as well as planning your own music-related business, working both autonomously and in groups.

This module develops previous learning in music marketing by introducing the advanced issues in its practical and theoretical principles. It provides an evaluative overview of salient economic, promotional and developmental concepts to equip you with the appropriate language and tools of music marketing and communications. Such learning will enable you to develop an understanding of how to create robust marketing and promotional campaigns.

The module aims to examine the relationship between music and culture exploring its nature, meanings, forms and implications. Drawing on a range of theoretical frameworks and research methodologies (cultural studies, gender theory), you will examine key domains of cultural music production to understand the ways in which these domains have been constructed and to develop the skills necessary to analyse such forms.

This module aims to explore the key principles of music journalism and develop practical skills in interviewing and writing reviews, features, biographies, website content and promotional material. You will also explore the history of music journalism and its possible future. As well as those considering a career in music journalism, either full-time or part of a portfolio career, the module will appeal to students who would like a greater understanding of working with the press from an artist's perspective ­ or simply of the link between music and words.

This module aims to enable you to develop your critical understanding of key and contemporary issues in the music business and wider arts sector. You will explore how the complexity and ambiguity of these issues affect professional practice in arts management and the music business, and develop your independent enquiry, analysis and communication skills to devise and sustain arguments about key and contemporary issues in arts management.

This module develops to an advanced level the organisational knowledge, understanding, and practical skills required to plan, finance and deliver a major music- and/or arts-related project. The project will draw together all elements of the programme to date, encouraging you to demonstrate advanced practice in the presentation of a project and to work with external partners and audiences. Indicative topics for study and practice include: entrepreneurship; programming or product development; project planning and management including problem-solving; budgeting, finance and fundraising; marketing, promotion and sponsorship; and production.

This module furthers knowledge, understanding and skills in a particular area of interest, whether arising from prior learning or enabling the pursuit of interests not other otherwise catered for in taught modules. Because of the diversity of Independent Projects, their aims will vary according to the nature of the project. This will be defined in a proposal, which is subject to the approval of the Module Leader.

The primary aim of this module is to enable you to affect positively the musical development of a community or individual(s). This will be achieved through the planning and delivery of participatory musical activity within a specific community-based or pedagogical context. To this end, both practical facilitation techniques and theoretical literature will be explored. Upon successful completion of this module, you will have gained sophisticated creative and interpersonal skills, and will be well-placed to start working professionally in the sector, and/or to undertake further study (PGCE or masters in community music).

This module presents specialist studies of contemporary musical styles through analysis of a range of works, genres, repertoires, and related musicological theories. Taking its starting point as the mid twentieth century, the module examines modernist, postmodernist and neo-modernist trends in relevant musical, cultural and philosophical contexts.

This module relates advanced concepts of finance, funding and economic systems to the music industries, and explores how different theoretical perspectives (forms of capital, musical genres, artist-audience relationships) inform the industries’ creative, management and entrepreneurial practices.

This module aims to provide you with an advanced idea of popular music studies through a selective overview of theoretical approaches, including cultural theory, sociology, political economy and musicology. Key areas of popular music studies will be addressed, including production, mediation and reception. Theory will be used to explore popular music practice and popular music practice will be used to explore popular music theory.

You can find more information about this course in the programme specification. Optional modules are usually available at levels 5 and 6, although optional modules are not offered on every course. Where optional modules are available, you will be asked to make your choice during the previous academic year. If we have insufficient numbers of students interested in an optional module, or there are staffing changes which affect the teaching, it may not be offered. If an optional module will not run, we will advise you after the module selection period when numbers are confirmed, or at the earliest time that the programme team make the decision not to run the module, and help you choose an alternative module.