The invention of MP3s and the Internet forever changed the music industry, forcing business executives to sing to a different tune.
Now, the School of Media Arts and Studies is adding another area of study to reflect the quickly changing music business — recording industry.
“The idea is to explore all the other career fields and jobs that revolve around the creative process,” said Josh Antonuccio, recording industry and audio production professor. “Recording industry looks at the emerging career fields from an entrepreneurial eye and the jobs that are growing, existing and being created as we speak.”
One of the classes Antonuccio teaches is The Business of Selling Music, which explores how to utilize the various revenue streams such as music licensing, live performance, record distribution and the explosion of music streaming services such as Spotify.
A problem that the class tackles is how to create new revenue streams in an era of “free” services on the Internet.
Eddie Ashworth, associate professor in audio recording, said students in recording industry will eventually work closely with the other five areas of emphasis within the school of Media Arts and Studies — music production, screenwriting and production, games and animation, media and social change and integrated media.
“We want the people who are going to be record producers to interact collaboratively with the folks who are more interested in the business side of it,” Ashworth said. “We’re doing our best to mirror what happens in the real world.”
Ashworth added that this program is one of the few recording industry disciplines offered by a mass communications school in the country and said he one day hopes it will be as competitive as other big name schools such as Belmont University.
While it’s too late for some students to switch their area of study, Mitchell Toler, a junior studying music production, said he looks forward to some of the classes that are now being offered thanks to the added major.
“I want to work with musicians on the recording side, but I think it’s important for anyone in the audio school to have a pretty firm grasp of the business side,” Toler said. “We have no idea what selling music is going to look like next year, or definitely not in five years, so knowing how to market yourself and market your music is really important right now.”
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@Wilbur_Hoffman
