The Future of Music and the Music Business

Examine alternatives to the traditional means of distributing and marketing music, and explore scenarios and uncover opportunities that the new digital reality offers.

This 12-week course is about discovering successful strategies for future success in the music industry. Through discussions, interactive exercises, and interviews with music industry insiders, The Future of Music will challenge conventional thinking about the business of music, and will explore new ways of creating, promoting, and distributing it. Each week, we will examine an aspect of the music industry, reflect on changes that are affecting it, and evaluate how these changes, technologies, innovation and powerful trends might directly affect your own plans. This course is essential for all artists, songwriters and music business people seeking success in the future. The music industry is at the heart of a Perfect Storm. Three massive low-pressure systems - the Internet, the introduction of digital music, and the advent of personal computer CD recording capability - have advanced and converged into an unprecedented file-sharing maelstrom. Over the past few years, music discovery and consumption have been some of the most popular uses of the Internet, with P2P file sharing having become the preference of choice with tens of millions of music consumers. The proliferation of new artists and music overall is bigger than ever before, primarily as a result of the Internet, but there are a myriad of issues still at hand that need to be resolved. The Future of Music course will examine scenarios for the future from the perspective of what is working today and what will work tomorrow. The course will look into the landscape of artists, writers, managers and publishers sitting in the center of an entirely new digital enterprise. It will evaluate traditional promotion and distribution methods and the development of new ones. And, the Future of Music course will take an in depth look into what music fans really want, and how they want to receive it. You will learn:

• The Top 10 Truths that will guide the music business in the future
• How money is really made in the music industry
• The major forces at play in the music market today and tomorrow
• The way technology continuously transforms the music business
• New approaches to promotion that challenge conventional thinking
• New business models for the future that exploit digital distribution

For more course information visit Berklee Music