Music Management MA

Program Overview

This intensive program combines music management principles with practical work in Sheffield's thriving music scene. It offers specialized modules in music industry leadership, strategic design thinking, and funding strategies, empowering students with the skills for a successful career in music management or to enhance their prospects as music creators. With a variety of assessment methods and a stimulating teaching environment, the program prepares students for roles in music promotion, marketing, publishing, production, and journalism.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

Taught by the Department of Music and the Management School, this program allows you to specialize in your areas of interest while gaining insight into the principles and strategies of management across the creative industries. As the music industries are rapidly changing, private and public sector organizations are looking for graduates who can bring a high degree of flexibility and critical insight, which are transferable skills that are taught throughout the program.

Outline:

The program is structured as follows:

• Core Modules:
• Principles of Music Industry Leadership:
This module explores key principles underpinning successful music management practice, including music policy, digital rights revenues, and audience research and engagement. Students investigate these principles in the context of specific management environments, such as the grant-in-aid, independent, and global music sectors.
• Strategic Design Thinking for Music Consultancy: Students work in teams with a live client from the professional music world to address an issue of the client's choice.
The issues are typically those with long-term strategic bearing on the organization's work and existence or immediate operational issues. The course involves weekly seminars, research planning, and regular discussions with the course tutor and client. The final outcome is a live presentation to the client outlining research findings, interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations, followed by a written group report. Through lectures, students dissect current market trends in arts funding, learn quantitative and qualitative research methods for evaluation, and master the art of report writing.
• Core Modules - Choose One:
• Dissertation:
This unit comprises a dissertation of approximately 15,000 words requiring original investigation and research by the student on a topic within the area of music management approved by the unit tutor. Learning is supported by original research guided by ongoing individual tutorials.
• Extended Project: This unit comprises a practical music industry project of ambition and scope equivalent to a 10,000-word masters-level dissertation to be agreed in discussion with an allocated supervisor.
Learning is supported and guided by ongoing individual supervision tutorials.
• Optional Modules (Autumn) - Up to Two:
It is designed to foster an understanding of how forward-thinking strategies can be applied to anticipate trends, cultivate creativity, and anticipate change in the music industry.
• Accounting and Financial Management: This module provides knowledge and understanding of the roles of accounting and financial management in modern business organizations.
It introduces students to the objectives, techniques, and limitations of accounting for external accountability and internal decision-making and control.
• Introduction to Critical Theories and Concepts in the Creative and Cultural Industries: This module introduces and defines the Creative and Cultural Industries (CCI), exploring their role in society.
It covers various sectors, including theaters, museums, the music industry, and film, and explores ideas around the purposes, changes, and challenges to the CCI sector.
• Cultural Marketing: This module develops students' understanding, knowledge, and analytical skills in relation to marketing and consumption practices within the Creative and Cultural Industries (CCIs), specifically in relation to the CCI business context, types of CCI organizations, and marketing management practices.
• Optional Modules (Spring) - Up to Two:
• Branding:
This unit engages students with different theoretical perspectives on the nature of brands, their management, and the relationship between brands and their socio-cultural context. Students draw on these perspectives to write an analytical critique of a specific leisure brand.
• Cultural and Creative Entrepreneurship: This module bridges the gap between creativity, culture, and business by enabling learners to develop techniques that move their creative and critical thinking to entrepreneurial thinking.
It equips those who have previously studied or engaged with an area of creative or cultural practice to start a new business arising from existing or new creative and cultural practices, to manage a portfolio of loosely connected projects in the cultural and creative industries, and to develop intrapreneurial skills for innovation in existing organizations in the cultural and creative industries. Students will synthesize knowledge from CCI theory, up-to-date industry examples, and guest speakers who work at the forefront of these digital transformations.
• Managing Festivals, Events, and Creative Performances: This module explores the growth, development, characteristics, issues, and influences relevant to international art fairs, festivals, artistic performances, and events and their impact on localities in terms of income generation, providing added value to tourist spaces, and their role in showcasing cultures and cultural products and places.

Assessment:

Assessment takes a variety of forms, such as reports and essays.

Teaching:

Teaching is delivered through a combination of lectures and tutorials. These are combined with departmental study days and extracurricular performance opportunities, all of which makes for a stimulating and supportive study environment. Projects may include students undertaking consultancy and promotions work with national partners.

Careers:

The program prepares students for a variety of careers in the music industry, including:

• Music Management
• Music Promotion
• Music Marketing
• Music Publishing
• Music Production
• Music Journalism
• Arts Administration

Other:

The Department of Music is an All-Steinway School. The Management School is Triple Crown accredited, by AMBA, EQUIS, and AACSB. Sheffield is celebrated as one of the UK's leading music cities, with dozens of major venues from the City Hall and Crucible to Yellow Arch Studios and the Foundry, covering all music genres. We work closely with the University's Concerts Series and oversee ensembles such as the Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, the Chamber Choir, and the Folk Group, so our MA students have the opportunity to perform and develop ensemble skills with their peers.