Program Overview

The Music Business Management MA is an exciting and challenging course reflecting the dynamism, creativity, and inventiveness of the global popular music sector. This course aims to develop the next generation of creative, and critically agile music professionals. Music is at the heart of everything we do, and we use it as the lens through which we critique and enhance the potential of the creative industries to produce a rich, sustainable, inclusive, and diverse environment from which all can flourish. 

All teaching staff on the course have comprehensive professional experience or are currently active in the music industries. The course is designed to reflect the interdisciplinary collaborative and entrepreneurial nature of music sector working practices. We examine the music environment using a transdisciplinary approach that includes business, cultural, economic, and sociological theories that cover the creative and cultural industries. Additionally, we will provide you with the flexibility to choose between the informal pathways specialising in artist management, business management and live music management. 

The music industries are known to be highly networked, hyper-competitive and fast-paced. Since the impact of the global pandemic, Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, there has been a renewed interest across the music industries in equality, diversity, inclusivity, and mental health. The Music Business Management MA is at the forefront of research initiatives, investigating all aspects of music. Our research groups which include the Black Music Research Unit, Centre of Research in Arts and Media and Communication and Media Research Unit contribute to our rich and diverse profile of high-quality research.  You’ll be encouraged to become leaders in various fields, ranging from music entrepreneurship and ethical management to social justice and sustainability in the music ecosphere.