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BA Entrepreneurship and Popular Music
About this course
Entrepreneurship and popular music is a combination that reflects the reality of the contemporary music industry, where artistic talent and entrepreneurial initiative are inseparable for those who want to build sustainable careers. Popular music is not just a cultural form but a global industry, and the people who succeed in it rarely do so through musical skill alone. Understanding how the industry works, how labels, streaming platforms, live music venues, and management companies are structured and how to navigate and influence them, requires the kind of commercial and entrepreneurial thinking that business education provides alongside creative and analytical musical study. At Derby this three-year full-time programme includes a foundation year, a sandwich year, a year abroad, and a work placement, making it one of the most professionally oriented programmes available in this field. You will develop your creative and performance skills alongside investigation into the aesthetic, analytical, sociological, and historical dimensions of music, building a critical and contextual understanding of popular music culture as well as your own practice within it. The entrepreneurship curriculum is designed to be vocationally relevant and challenging, reflecting the complex nature of contemporary business and giving you the practical skills to conceive, develop, and manage ventures in and around the music industry. Graduates find careers across the music and creative industries. Artist management, music promotion, record label work, live events production, music publishing, digital marketing, and business development roles in creative companies are among the most common destinations. Some graduates continue as performing or recording artists, bringing their entrepreneurial skills to the management of their own careers. Others apply the combination of creative understanding and commercial thinking to adjacent fields including the wider entertainment industry, media, and cultural policy. Many continue to postgraduate study in music business or entrepreneurship.
Syllabus & Modules
Typical curriculumStudent Satisfaction
National Student Survey - 10 respondents (86% response rate)
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