Music Business/Management Courses

The Berklee Popular Music Institute (BPMI) is a one-year program (fall, spring, and summer) that provides practical access to high levels of the music industry with a focus on the concert festival circuit. Students will learn how to navigate careers in the ever-changing music industry as they hone their skills in communication, marketing, promotion, and live music. Curriculum activities are designed in collaboration with today's top industry figures to reflect contemporary trends and practices in the music industry.

BPMI students will:

• find and develop artists;
• budget a tour;
• book and promote concerts;
• place festival holds;
• design merchandise;
• develop press releases; and
• build and maintain all social media platforms, and much more.

The capstone of the curriculum includes opportunities for students to participate at prestigious festivals and industry conferences.  Students will be required to travel to festivals such as Lollapalooza, Osheaga, the Governors Ball, and Music Midtown, where they will act as artist managers, production and tour managers, and artist media representatives. Students will also be required to attend and work at high-level concert and touring industry events in the USA. 

The Berklee Popular Music Institute (BPMI) is a one-year program (fall, spring, and summer) that provides practical access to high levels of the music industry with a focus on the concert festival circuit. Students will learn how to navigate careers in the ever-changing music industry as they hone their skills in communication, marketing, promotion, and live music. Curriculum activities are designed in collaboration with today's top industry figures to reflect contemporary trends and practices in the music industry.

BPMI students will:

• find and develop artists;
• budget a tour;
• book and promote concerts;
• place festival holds;
• design merchandise;
• develop press releases; and
• build and maintain all social media platforms, and much more.

The capstone of the curriculum includes opportunities for students to participate at prestigious festivals and industry conferences.  Students will be required to travel to festivals such as Lollapalooza, Osheaga, the Governors Ball, and Music Midtown, where they will act as artist managers, production and tour managers, and artist media representatives. Students will also be required to attend and work at high-level concert and touring industry events in the USA. 

The Berklee Popular Music Institute (BPMI) is a one-year program (fall, spring, and summer) that provides practical access to high levels of the music industry with a focus on the concert festival circuit. Students will learn how to navigate careers in the ever-changing music industry as they hone their skills in communication, marketing, promotion, and live music. Curriculum activities are designed in collaboration with today's top industry figures to reflect contemporary trends and practices in the music industry.

BPMI students will:

• find and develop artists;
• budget a tour;
• book and promote concerts;
• place festival holds;
• design merchandise;
• develop press releases; and
• build and maintain all social media platforms, and much more.

The capstone of the curriculum includes opportunities for students to participate at prestigious festivals and industry conferences.  Students will be required to travel to festivals such as Lollapalooza, Osheaga, the Governors Ball, and Music Midtown, where they will act as artist managers, production and tour managers, and artist media representatives. Students will also be required to attend and work at high-level concert and touring industry events in the USA. 

This course introduces students to the fundamentals of how a creative entrepreneur works, relates, acts, creates, iterates, and adapts. This course covers the fundamental similarities between being an artist and thinking entrepreneurially, and develops students’ entrepreneurial capacities by building on their existing creative instincts such as collaboration, improvisation, the ability to observe, learning by failing, and the discipline of practice.

The course provides an orientation on the various roles, stakeholders, supply chains, and monetization opportunities in today's new media industry, the traditional music business, and the performing arts industries. The course aims to also address specific matters related to dance and theater majors, and will dedicate course time to the broader performing arts and artistic nonprofit worlds. The course will emphasize a familiarity with the key players and roles in the music business and performing arts industries: managers, agents, theater producers, publishers, publicists, lawyers, record label executives, live music promoters, and arts administrators, as well as fundamentals of intellectual property, music publishing, licensing, copyright, royalties, patents, etc. Students will examine how a changing industry, and emerging technologies such as virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence, result in new monetization and licensing opportunities and roles in the media and entertainment industries, and how to build a successful career in this new ecosystem. The class will also introduce to students case studies from a cross section of the creative industries including theater, TV, music, and artistic nonprofit worlds.

RAIDAR is a Berklee/MIT music licensing platform designed by Berklee students, for Berklee students to make money from their songs. Berklee students, alumni and faculty can license their songs to visual media students. RAIDAR is powered by Open Music technology, an industry consortium of 300+ members including streaming services and major labels, and is a tool for artist education and career sovereignty.

This course, the first of a two-course series, will use RAIDAR as a pedagogical tool to demonstrate experientially how the stakeholders across the music value chain interact and how intellectual property is distributed and commercialized across this chain. Through a grounding in the concepts related to RAIDAR, spread across many disciplines with the music industry, and then through experiential learning and work in the project itself, students will come away with an understanding of what it takes to build a business in the music industry, and the personal experience of helping to create a real-world startup themselves.

The first semester will focus on the ecosystem in which RAIDAR is built, including the legal, business and technical concepts, and the skills they will need to contribute to the development of RAIDAR as a business.

In the next course, students will work on the RAIDAR team through a practicum, drafting legal documents and intellectual property education tools, conducting business development, designing and implementing marketing and communication strategies, and participating in an interdisciplinary, student-led team that sustains RAIDAR, with guidance by BerkleeICE and Music Business faculty.

The purpose of this course is to educate artists on the fundamentals of running themselves as a business and how to think as a startup. Students will explore and learn to define their mission or unique value proposition (UVP) as an artist (i.e. why they do what they do, and what they uniquely offer to the market), and how to build a career based on that. Students will learn the basics of marketing, branding, accounting, and entrepreneurial finance, as well as concepts such as negotiating, developing an online presence, building a team and organizational structure, crowdfunding, understanding basic online analytics, and legal structures of business entities. In addition, the course will incorporate material around the areas of networking, developing relationships, creating habits for self-care and promoting yourself online using common and emerging web design and social media platforms.

This course examines first-hand the ways in which technology is disrupting the new media industry, including how new tech platforms can be harnessed to impact the future of music consumption, and the impact of music on the adoption of new technologies. Students learn the product design process, and put their music-thinking skills into practice by experiencing what it takes to conceive, design, and prototype an actual product in the new media industry. Students learn the process and methods for product design and development through researching and collaborating in interdisciplinary teams, with guidance from Berklee faculty, as well as industry leaders. Student teams build new music-related technological applications and products, and assess their work through open-ended questions and user observation. Students leave with hands-on experience on prototyping responsive solutions, and receive valuable feedback and coaching on their work through real-world industry partners.

Startup Lab is an intensive course in product or service design, development, and launching, which culminates with an end-of semester pitch and demo to real-life customers and industry experts. Startup Lab is not about business plan writing—students will be challenged to identify a need, ideate, imagine, prototype, test, iterate, build, price, market, and launch a marketable product or service in under 15 weeks. There is no limit to what is considered a product or service: software startups, musical equipment products, performance festivals, publishing companies, dance or theater companies, or musical groups are all viable ideas for the Startup Lab. This demanding, results-oriented class is open to all College and Conservatory students, and the diversity of projects and students in the class will offer the opportunity for cross-discipline collaboration, discussion, and learning with an emphasis on product/service design, go-to-market planning, continuous iteration, and customer testing that will challenge students’ creative and analytical minds. Students taking the course will have the chance to interact with and learn from real-world entrepreneurs and visiting researchers from other universities such as MIT. This course is about the intense process of launching a product or service with each group being treated as a real, results-driven startup with real stakes and real pressures.

This course will provide a survey of the music industry, highlighting those areas where music and business intersect. The focus will be on career possibilities in the music industry, the development of business-related knowledge and skills necessary for effectively maintaining a professional music career, the vocabulary and terminology of the music industry, and the distinction between music and business at the corporate level. The course will serve both the student wishing to increase his/her understanding of common business practices related to the music industry, and the student who is considering further study of music business/management.

A specialized study for musicians of local, state, and federal tax systems in the United States. Topics include personal, self-employed, corporate, and partnership taxation issues, with emphasis on effective record-keeping, filing requirements, taxable income determination, and allowable deductions.

An overview of the activities involved in managing a business, including marketing, accounting, finance, and the production of goods and services. The course focuses on the ability of the music business executive to analyze, plan, coordinate, and set objectives for these activities, through the presentation of business theory and problem solving.