Music Business

The music industry is a complex commercial ecosystem that sits behind every recording, live event, streaming platform, sync deal and artist brand you encounter. Understanding how it works, who holds power within it, how money flows, and how talent is developed and managed is the concern of music business as an academic discipline. It draws on economics, marketing, law, cultural studies and management to give you both the strategic understanding and the practical skills to operate effectively in one of the world's most creative and competitive sectors.

At the University of Gloucestershire you will study this three-year full-time programme, covering the full range of activities that make up the industry. You will learn how to plan and run live events, how to develop and manage artists and their audiences, how to devise and execute promotional campaigns, and how to think entrepreneurially about music enterprises of your own. The curriculum takes in the economics of streaming and recorded music, rights management and publishing, booking and touring, artist management, marketing strategy and the digital landscape that now dominates the industry.

You will develop both commercial awareness and practical capability, graduating with the kind of rounded understanding that employers and clients across the sector value.

Graduates of music business enter roles across the industry, including artist management, record label A and R, live events promotion, venue management, music publishing, sync licensing, digital distribution, and music journalism. Many graduates also take entrepreneurial routes, establishing their own management companies, events businesses or labels. The transferable business and marketing skills developed during the degree are also valued outside the music industry in events management, marketing, media, and the broader creative economy.

Postgraduate study in music business, arts management, or entertainment law is a further option for those who wish to develop specialist expertise.