Music Business

Our lecturers – record label executives, artists, managers and academic music writers – will be with you every step of your journey to making it in the music business.

You’ll learn how to run live events, develop and manage artists, conduct sophisticated promotional campaigns, gain specialist knowledge in music law and launch your own music enterprises. 

In our close-knit community in Cheltenham, you’ll be supported to build your own professional network, working with organisations like the Cheltenham Jazz Festival and Music Works, as well as collaborating with Popular Music and Sound & Music Production students and other creative courses.

You’ll be based at Park, our Creative Campus offering fully equipped rehearsal and recording studios, spatial sound suites, podcast facilities and performance and broadcast spaces.

The course is packed with opportunities for you to gain professional experience, including the option of a full work placement year in the UK.

Music Business at UoG is highly practical and coursework-based. You’ll benefit from a mixture of workshops and lectures/seminars together with industry work placements – with coursework making up 96% of your assessment. 

In you first year, you’ll gain a grounding in the music business: developing musicians in an A&R role; devising marketing strategies as well as learning audio production in our state-of-the-art studios. As well as this your academic journey will be grounded with a contextualisation of popular music and an introduction to theory and research.  

You’ll continue all this in your second year when you’ll also begin to explore music law and copyright, PR, publicity and branding, as well as managing live shows and developing your own entrepreneurial projects. 

In your third year, you’ll work as a freelancer in industry, extend your professional practice, complete your major project, and research a dissertation on the music subject which most interests you. 

You’ll also have the choice to opt for a four-years course – adding a full year work placement between your second and final years of study.

Our industry-relevant, career-focused curriculum offers professional development and industry insight to prepare you for the realities of working in the music industry. Modules are aligned to careers in artist management, record company marketing, press, and PR digital media, music copyright, music sync, artist liaison and live event production. 

Our strong industry links, including UK Music, Music Managers Forum, Music Works Gloucestershire, Cheltenham Jazz Festival, and many more local PR and events organisations provide placement and freelance opportunities. These frequently result in paid part-time work during the course, and increased networking opportunities leading to further career advancement. 

Recent graduates are now working at Parlophone Records, Plus PR, Dirty Hit Records, Festival Republic, Dark Arts PR, Universal Records, Ginger Owl Productions, NR Events, Sixty Four Music, Kings Place, Ditto Music and many more.