Undergraduate BA(hons) or BSc (Hons) Creative Industries Futures (Music) Music Business

Modules 

MIF – 401 Music Industry Futures 

This module gives students an overview of the music industry, past, present, and future. Students learn about the mechanisms, structures, and practices that drive the music industry and where their specialism sits within it, whilst gaining an understanding of key fundamentals of music business, structure, market, and areas of specialism. 

MIF – 402 Music Media and Technology 

This module enables students to examine the role of music across a range of media, exploring the way that music, media and technology intersect. It prepares students to understand how their specialist skills will be used in the industries of today and tomorrow. 

MIF – 403 Impact and influence of Music

This module enables students to explore the varied impact of music, focusing on its ability to influence audiences, create community connections, and support creative practitioners, as well as the physical and mental impact music may have on individuals and wellbeing.

MIF – 404 Music, Culture and Society

This module enables students to understand the cultural and social aspects of music and to connect the theory with the practice, helping students to learn how to navigate the industry whilst being aware of important sociocultural histories, trends, and issues that affect the music industry.  This module encourages you to explore these ideas through discussion and debate, developing your ability to critically explain and justify your work. These skills are essential for defining your identity as a creative practitioner and communicating your values within the industry.

CIF – 405 Preparing for Collaborative Projects

This module enables students to prepare and organise themselves and their work to engage in an interdisciplinary collaborative creative project. Students will work on their discipline-specific skills through a suite of skills units and labs, bringing them to the collaborative project to begin working in communities of practice. 

CIF – 406 – Engaging in Collaborative Projects

This module enables students to work collaboratively on a shared project brief. Building on 405, it prompts the students to further develop their skills and begin realising larger cross-disciplinary projects with creatives across music and/or digital arts pathways.

Skills Units

SKU-BUS-01 Entrepreneurship and innovation

This Unit introduces students to the concept of entrepreneurship and innovation. It emphasises to students the importance of identifying a gap in the market, developing an idea, and building a USP. Students will be encouraged to think outside the box to develop their unique business ideas.

SKU-BUS-02 Creative Project Management

This Unit introduces students to methods and techniques for management and leadership and encourages them to consider the type of manager and/or leader that they want to be.

SKU-BUS-03 Management and Leadership

This Unit introduces students to methods and techniques for management and leadership and encourages them to consider the type of manager and/or leader that they want to be.

SKU-BUS-04 Brand and Audience studies

This Unit aims to introduce the concepts of brand, audience, consumer, and media within the creative industries. Students will also investigate the creative and cultural relationships that exist between brands and their audiences.

Modules 

CIF – 501 – Specialist Collaborative Work

This module enables students to contribute through their chosen specialism to an interdisciplinary collaborative creative industries project, and gives them the opportunity to develop more advanced skills through the realisation of highly specialised projects, driven by industry briefs. 

CIF – 502 – Professional Collaborative Work

This module aims to enable students to explore, examine, and review the function of a professional project. Students will work in a professional context to deliver a project in their specialism. 

CIF – 503 – Specialist Route Skills 

This module enables students to use tools, techniques, and procedures to work toward producing work of a professional standard in their chosen specialism. Students will be able to use relevant academic research and sources to critically review and place their practice in a humanities, phenomenology or cultural framework. Crucially, this module provides students with additional advanced technical skills development, through which they are assessed. 

CIF – 504 – Professional Route Skills 

This module enables students to create a portfolio of professional, specialist work demonstrating transferable skills to meet sector expectations. Students will be able to use relevant academic research and sources to critically review and place their practice in a humanities, phenomenology or cultural framework. Here, the emphasis on specific skills remains; however is realised in a broader context. 

Skills Units

SKU-BUS-05 Communications, Documentation, Contracts & Negotiation

This Unit explores a range of different contracts that exist in the music industry, and through case studies and real-world examples, students will learn about the importance of reading and understanding contracts. By taking this unit, students will also have an opportunity to practice their negotiation skills to prepare them for future contract negotiations. 

SKU-BUS-06 Creative Talent Development

In this Skills Unit, students will investigate the relationship between the artist, the artist manager, and the wider creative industries. Students will also understand the changing role of the Manager and the ability of the Artist to create alternative strategies to develop and release their product. Students will explore the changing face of A&R within the global music industry, what this consists of and how it is carried out, and understand what labels look for when signing an artist. It will look at how the role of the artist manager has evolved, including different business models currently evidenced by existing managers.

SKU-BUS-08 Marketing Strategies

This Unit builds on the Brand and Audience Studies L4 Unit to apply the concepts of branding, audience awareness, and marketing within an event context. Students will explore marketing strategies that promote events and increase revenue.

SKU-BUS-12 Copyright, royalties, publishing, and income streams

This Unit builds on the introductory look at these topics that students received at L4. Through an in-depth exploration of copyright, royalties, publishing, and income streams, students will learn how to protect their work and make money from it.

SKU-BUS-10 Live Event Management

The aim of this Unit is to help learners develop an in-depth understanding of the economics and logistics of the Live Event Industry, from the local gig to an international arena tour. By the end of the module, learners will have acquired a detailed understanding of the political, economic, social and technological developments that impact the Live Industry, together with knowledge of the opportunities and challenges presented by legislation

SKU-BUS-11 Mind Your Business 2

Developing your knowledge from Mind Your Business, this takes the foundations you have developed further, by delving deeper into managing a variety of business elements to support the sustainability of your business. 

Modules

CIF – 601 – Critical Review 

This module includes a research or practical project that critically reviews one or more current issues, constraints or practices that impact your specialism and wider creative industries, the application of your specialism to other industry sectors or broader cultural

or workforce issues relating to your specialism and the creative cultural industries. Students will be able to use relevant academic research and sources to critically review and place their practice in a humanities, phenomenology or cultural framework.

CIF – 603 – Leadership and CPD

This module enables students to engage with continuing professional development and to review and develop their leadership skills in different contexts, whilst also building and maintaining a specialist skills development plan for their chosen specialism. 

CIF – 602 – Leading a Professional Collaborative Project

This module aims to enable students to build their leadership and professional skills through an interdisciplinary collaborative professional project. It acts as the student’s final capstone project, and is driven by the student, culminating in a final performance, showcase, professional body of work, or a combination thereof, to a high professional standard. 

CIF – 604 – Professional Portfolio 

This module enables students to create a portfolio and digital presence that includes course output, work experience, freelance work or volunteering targeted to professional opportunities or further study. Through the delivery of their assessment, students are invited to position their work through the lens of industry, creating a portfolio of work and an accompanying plan for professional development and progression in their chosen field.

Skills Units

SKU-BUS-16 Tour Management

This Unit explores the legal, financial, and logistical side of bringing international performers to the UK, and/or working remotely with international talent.

SKU-BUS-20 Advanced Marketing Strategies 

This Unit explores the process of campaign management, and students will learn how to plan a campaign from start to finish, which incorporates a range of innovative promotion and media engagement techniques.

SKU-BUS-11 Mind Your Business 2

Developing your knowledge from Mind Your Business, this takes the foundations you have developed further, by delving deeper into managing a variety of business elements to support the sustainability of your business. 

SKU-BUS-19 Consumer and Audience Psychology

This Unit will look at disruption within the creative industries. Students will look at current developments and innovations that are changing the creative landscape. Students will learn how to plan for industry disruption to ensure that their own businesses will continue to evolve and thrive.

CIF – 701 – Professional Practice Frameworks

This module enables students to demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the professional sector-specific expertise required for a creative industries profession. Students here reflect on their own specialist and professional experiences and map to professional standard frameworks. There is the opportunity to engage with additional external qualifications through this module. 

CIF – 702 – Applied research 

This module enables students to evidence academic expertise in an applied research

context. Students will be able to use relevant academic research to drive their project, over two terms, where they will submit a final portfolio of work. Some examples include: professional portfolios, thesis, creative portfolios, live performances, creative artefacts and products. 

CIF – 703 – Ideas into action 

Within this module, students will investigate the project management processes needed to develop a project from concept to release, developing their own craft into project(s) which align with their chosen area of study. 

CIF – 704 – Making connections 

This module enables students to identify, inform, and establish a network of peers and relevant industry and community contacts to develop opportunities and advocacy in key organisations in the local community, research organisations, charities and the creative industries, as well as connect with communities of investors.