BA (Hons) Music Business & Management

UCA’s Integrated Foundation Year is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and more.

You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.

Find out more about the Integrated Foundation Year

For our students coming from a non-UK educational background, UCA has an Integrated International Foundation Year to bring students from around the world to one hub of creativity. 

This year of preparatory study is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and the English speaking and writing skills you’ll need to succeed.

You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.

Find out more about the Integrated International Foundation Year

Business Bootcamp 1: Design Thinking & Orientation
This unit is designed to introduce you to the Business School for the Creative Industries highly effective learning community and professional global network orientation as you explore design thinking.

Music: Theories & Histories
This unit will situate advertising in broader economic and political practices, and how audiences and consumers value and engage with creative outputs in the public sphere. This unit will equip you to connect your experiences of desiring brands, buying things you’ll never wear, signing up to apps’ invasive surveillance, with thinkers who’ve themselves struggled with and successfully challenged industry barriers to propose creative solutions.

Business Seminar 1 – Understanding Consumers
This unit explores what happens before, during, and after the point when someone buys something. It investigates how having (or not having) certain products affects our lives; specifically, how these items influence how we feel about ourselves and each other, especially with the influence of social media and the digital consumption.

Foundations of Marketing and Communications
You will be introduced to the concepts, theories and models utilised in marketing and communications, providing the basis for further study within the course. Specifically, you’ll be introduced to the objectives and theory of marketing as a business function and explore the role of marketing within organisations and how marketing can be used in the achievement of an organisation's goals and objectives. Moreover, you’ll develop your understanding of the principles of marketing and communications and its relevance to organisations in fulfilling their customer requirements in a changing world.

Live Music Industry
Estimated to be worth £1.1bn to the UK economy (ukmusic.org), it is clear that the live music industry is an important sector of the music business and a focus for any artist and manager. The purpose of this unit will be to review and discuss the structure of the live industry, identifying key companies and players, the current issues and the changing interdisciplinary relationships between live and recorded music sectors, as well as the management, organisation and promotion of a live music event. You’ll develop a good understanding of the political, economic and technological developments that impact on the live industry. You will learn the skills necessary for work in the sector, as well as applying marketing and promotional principles to live music events.

Business Bootcamp 2: Research and Development
This Bootcamp is designed to build a highly effective learning community aligned with the Inclusive Curriculum Framework, through research and development. R&D is the generation of new knowledge to apply to businesses, and is something that companies undertake in order to develop new products, ways of doing business or services, or develop those that already exist.

Principles of Live Events
This unit will introduce you to the fundamental guiding principles of designing and managing successful events from the generation stage to the post-event review and evaluation. You’ll explore, analyse and critique the strategy of global arts events and festivals of various scales, and create your own blueprint for designing and implementing thriving live events, before pitching it with your group.

Business Seminar 2 – Business Analytics
You’ll learn about business analytics, using case studies and examples from various creative industries and develop your knowledge of statistics and probability. You’ll be introduced to concepts such as random variables and probability distributions, and it cover the basics of statistical analysis and inference.

Music & Brands
This unit explores the concepts of brand development, identity and management strategies. You will gain a broad understanding of the power of music and brands, and what makes a brand successful. You will look at the current music ‘brandscape’ and understand strategic alliances that exploit commercial opportunities as well as exploring issues around authenticity and integrity.

Music: Business & Practices
The fundamental principles of music business and practices through a global lens are covered in this unit. You will identify with how the macro environment affects the music industry sectors and consumer groups and how it operates, introducing you the various market levels and sectors. It will examine the various roles and stakeholders in the business as well as the structure, supply chain and distribution of products and services to end users. Within these core areas, the unit will evaluate and consider trends and developmental opportunities and challenges as technology continues to impact on the business.

Business Bootcamp 3: Storytelling and Narrative (all students)
This bootcamp provides you with an opportunity to explore narrative structures and experiment how they have been used, particularly in the changing landscape of digital marketing, demonstrating how important it is to develop your storytelling skills in the creative industries.

Artist Development & Management (all students)
You’ll explore, through management theories and practices, how to develop, manage and sustain artist careers in today's dynamic music market. You’ll analyse and discuss the A&R and artist development process through to marketing, promotion and distribution and consumption of products/services to end users. This will consider genre, key markets, media and representation.

Business Seminar 3: Professional Practice (all students)
Through a series of lectures, workshops and seminars you'll begin your preparations for industry experience. We'll ask you to self-assess your interests, strengths, areas for development and your future career ambitions; building and creating your network, how you can make a positive contribution to the industry and how you see yourself and others.

Creative Business Start-up (all students)
Learn the process of creating and building a new business venture, through exploring a range of case studies and identifying and evaluating the role of creativity in business start-ups. With this knowledge, you will apply business innovation as well as how to create value in firms, through new product or services, technologies and business. To this, you’ll conduct market research and produce a creative business plan.

Business Bootcamp 4: Exploring Innovation (all students)
Through a series of exciting and engaging fast-paced workshops, tasks and peer sessions you will be introduced and welcomed to professional practice and conduct in the creative industries through the BSCI Honeycomb Lens where we facilitate self-motivation, exploration, empowerment, and support development and recognition of skills for learning as you experience your business school journey.

Professional Placement (all students)
This unit is self-initiated and will involve you taking a legitimate Industry placement opportunity, regarded by you and your unit leader as an appropriate and unique professional experience.

All students choose one unit from Gamification & Marketing and Wearable Technology

Gamification & Marketing (elective unit)
This unit approaches the subject of gamification and marketing holistically, investigating the practical, critical and theoretical contexts surrounding this subject.

Wearable Technology (elective unit)
This unit approaches the subject of wearable technology, assessing the practical, critical and theoretical contexts surrounding this subject. You’ll explore wearable cultures, alongside the macro and micro landscapes and how this is influencing and impacting the creative industries. You’ll look at how sectors are adopting, or resisting, wearable technology and where and how it is being used.

All students choose one unit from Digital Marketing Analytics or Influence & Influencers or Festivals & Cultures or or Journalism or Financial Management for the Creative Industries

Digital Marketing Analytics (elective unit)
Digital marketing analytics seeks to understand markets to improve marketing actions. The ability to acquire, analyse and to understand large marketing data sets, made possible by digitisation, can improve marketing campaigns and result in better performance. Data sets can be mined using a variety of quantitative techniques. Understanding markets better will enable more effective allocation of marketing budgets and an improved understanding of customer experiences.

Influence & Influencers (elective unit)
You’ll apply a critical and theoretical lens to the subject, questioning the role the influencer plays within society and business. This unit in particular will focus on the ethical considerations that arise in the application of influence within marketing contexts, including the sector’s engagement with gender, sexuality and race. Finally, you’ll propose and create an innovative social media campaign, that engages with the subjects explored in this unit.

Journalism (elective unit)
This unit looks at styles of journalism that allow for even greater levels of depth, investigation, external perspectives, media law and ethics and substantiated fact. You will not only present the story, but look beyond, the story behind the story, and potentially further, the story behind that. As part of this unit, we will present and discuss the importance of “hooks” and “angles” in generating in-depth work, alongside the importance of distinctiveness, in view of the existing sources of information that could be consulted.

Festivals & Cultures (elective unit)
Festivals have been an essential part of the fabric of social and religious life since times immemorial. This unit will explore the origins, functions and evolution of the different varieties of festivals, present a holistic view of the multiple dimensions at play in contemporary festivals, and attempt to answer the question: what are the makings of successful and enduring festivals?  

Financial Management for the Creative Industries (elective unit)
Financial Management in the creative and cultural industries is all about getting the right financial result by managing your income and expenditure. Financial management is an essential part of any enterprise and business. In this unit, you will explore business, financial and management models relating to the creative economy with focus sessions on the nuances of Fashion, Music and Digital revenue streams.

All students choose one unit from Behavioural Studies and Consumption or Music, Media & Communications: Print & Audio or Visual Communications

Behavioural Studies and Consumption (elective unit)
You’ll be introduced to the theory and practice of consumer behaviour and consumption. You’ll explore how perceptions, learning, memory, personality, and culture influence consumer behaviour and how consumption changes by cultural and subcultural influences.

Music, Media & Communications: Print & Audio (elective unit)
This unit explores the connection between music and media. It will uncover the history of music media from the early works of music criticism up to the present-day landscape of multiple digital channels, social media and individual narratives. You’ll chart the history of the music press and journalism from Melody Maker to the present-day blogosphere, as well as the history of music in film and on video. You’ll also look at the audio culture around music in terms of radio and podcasting, which has been a growth area of late. Finally, you’ll explore to what degree digital media has disrupted this traditional model of media hierarchy and how music is intrinsic to advertising.

Visual Communications (elective unit)
You’ll explore the many facets of visual communication - graphic design through typography, editorial design, branding and packaging and illustration through drawing, image making and visual storytelling, all which touch upon both traditional and digital skills and techniques. You’ll also learn the wider contexts surrounding visual communication in multiple contexts from fashion to music, and discuss the fast-changing nature of publishing in all its forms.
Creative Innovation (for students on the Professional Practice Year pathway)
The ability to adapt and innovate is a vital element of creative business to withstand and prosper in fast-paced, and highly transformative sectors. This unit is designed for you investigate the real-world, relevant issues that are impacting on your Industry, while challenging well-established theory and/or principles which these contemporary issues conflict with. You’ll attempt to locate solutions to these problems through creative concepts, underpinned by alternative or reinvigorated principles and/or theory.

Industry Lecture Series (for students on the Professional Practice Year pathway)
This unit allows you to explore contemporary industry practices central to today’s global creative industries. It will allow you to build a portfolio of knowledge pertinent to your chosen industry sector. The series will include industry expert lectures, group workshops and group working, in order to test and explore industry sectors

Critical Analysis with English for Academic Purposes 1 (For direct entry international students only)
This unit will help you improve your academic skills within the context of the creative industries, including learning about our core expectations, formal and informal communication skills, critical thinking, research and presenting skills and academic writing skills.

Critical Analysis with English for Academic Purposes 2 (For direct entry international students only)
This second unit will help you further improve your academic skills within the context of the creative industries, covering academic study, writing and considerations in-depth. This unit covers the likes of critical analysis, research methodologies, referencing, and further writing skills.

If you opt to complete a professional practice year, this will take place in year three. You will undertake a placement within the creative industries to further develop your skills and CV.

While you study the Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee for that year. This fee will be determined using government funding regulations. Based on current regulations, we expect this to be a maximum of 20% of the tuition fee rate that you are charged for your second year of study. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during this year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this as you approach your Professional Practice Year.

You’ll spend two years learning with us, before putting what you’ve learned into practice through a year-long industry placement.

Our Professional Practice placements give you the opportunity to develop your professional, academic and personal potential, equipping you to be confident and engaged in creative workplaces. These qualities are widely recognised by employers and a significant proportion of placement students nationally are offered graduate-level jobs or go onto postgraduate study.

Throughout your placement, your course team will support you, making use of our extensive industry connections to help facilitate you to find about the right placement for you. On conclusion of the placement, you’ll return to complete your final year of study – applying what you’ve learned on the job.

Business Bootcamp 5: Research & Methodologies
This bootcamp is about examining research and methodologies and how this applies to your course. We will discuss the different methods by which you can elicit findings whether quantitative (informing by data) or qualitative (informing from opinions). In most of today’s industries ‘data’ is king.

Publishing & Rights Management
This unit discusses music publishing, copyright and the management and exploitation of rights internationally in the digital age. Anchoring music copyright in historical foundations, the unit will trace the development and adaptation through analogue and digital disruption. With commentary and discussions from leading music business professionals you’ll analyse the debates between
the creative industries and technology companies and how various agents are shaping and challenging the basis of copyright in the digital age. You’ll learn about the current copyright conventions and treaties and be able to evaluate the issues and challenges for music copyrights in today’s digital economy.

Music: Global Industry & Futures
You’ll explore the concept of future thinking and its influence on the global music industry. You’ll be analysing influence from culture and society and predicting through recognition of global shifts and emerging trend manifestations. You’ll complete an in-depth study of the current macro environment, using the findings of this study to translate, validate and communicate a vision for the future.

Business Seminar 4: Strategy & Decision Making
More than ever, we are facing the challenge of making decisions under uncertainty against the backdrop of external factors that we cannot control or predict. As leaders, managers and executives, making effective decisions in a time-conscious manner is crucial. This bootcamp will enable you to transform decision-making into a smart and insightful process, providing a robust framework of effective and replicable solutions for better decisions and awareness of decision traps, as well as learning how to assess and choose high-value strategic options under the current climate of enormous uncertainty.

Business Bootcamp 6: Developing Enterprise
This unit will provide you with the opportunity to develop your creative thinking skills in a collaborative environment, bringing greater understanding to how those ideas may develop and transform through product or enterprise development.

Degree Project
In this final unit, you will apply all you’ve learned to create a distinctive piece of work for your degree project, the purpose of which is to allow you to identify opportunities successfully in your specialist subject area to promote and to develop your career. Through research, you will independently identify and/or generate innovative opportunities within your specialist subject area. Your portfolio will consist of a series of outcomes that showcase your knowledge, and your key attributes and skills as a reflective creative practitioner. You will be expected to consider the theoretical and professional contexts of your exploration. It is important that your work is contemporary, innovative, and representative of its target audience and industry sector.

All students choose one unit from Data Mining for Marketers or Audience Evaluation or Predictive Analytics for Business

Data Mining for Marketers (elective unit)
Data Mining focuses on the use of automation to uncover relationships within datasets that can be used to support improved decision processes. When employed in marketing, data mining will use customer, potential customer, supplier, and population data to reveal patterns in the data that have potential to improve the marketing process and outcomes.

Audience Evaluation (elective unit)
The concept of audiences has been broadened its meaning in recent years and is especially linked to the consumption of media and cultural productions. Audiences have been described as ‘spectators’, and most recently they are regarded as ‘consumers’ who avidly consume a variety of entertainment forms and cultural activities. This unit introduces audience research in the creative industries, aiming to evaluate how audiences play a key role in shaping creative and cultural experiences and marketing activities in contemporary business environments.

Predictive Analytics for Business (elective unit)
Predictive analytics is a domain of statistical analysis that allows an organisation to extract information from data to predict patterns and trends. This unit introduces predictive modelling and explains its application in business decisions. It focusses on a set of statistical techniques including regression modelling, cluster analysis and survival analysis.

This course is designed to offer you (if eligible) the opportunity to study part of your degree aboard at a UCA partner university, while still earning credits towards your UCA degree.

For more information please visit the Study Abroad section

Graduates of this course can expect to leave with the necessary skills to thrive in various sectors of such a fast-paced and diverse create space in various roles.

These include:

• Talent agent
• Artist manager
• Music business manager
• Music programme co-ordinator
• Royalties manager
• Record label manager
• Project manager
• PR manager
• Tour manager

Your training on this course will prepare you for a wide range of postgraduate courses. We offer postgraduate opportunities in our Business School and we will help you find the correct course for you and support you in your application should further study be for you.

Find out more about Business & Management courses at UCA

BA (Hons) course
BA (Hons) course with Professional Practice Year

The standard entry requirements* for these courses are one of the following:

• 112 UCAS tariff points, see accepted qualifications
• Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4)
• Distinction, Merit, Merit at BTEC Extended Diploma / BTEC National Extended Diploma
• Merit at UAL Extended Diploma
• 112 UCAS tariff points from an accredited Access to Higher Education Diploma in appropriate subject
• 27-30 total points in the International Baccalaureate Diploma with at least 15 IB points at Higher level, see more information about IB entry requirements.

And four GCSE passes at grade 9-4/A*-C including English (or Functional Skills English/Key Skills Communication Level 2).

Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply.  

Portfolio requirements

These courses don't require a portfolio. If you receive an offer, you’ll be invited to attend an Applicant Day where you can meet the course team and learn more about the course. 

BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year

The standard entry requirements* for these courses are one of the following:

• 32 UCAS tariff points, see accepted qualifications
• Pass at Foundation Diploma in Art & Design (Level 3 or 4)
• Pass, Pass, Pass at BTEC Extended Diploma / BTEC National Extended Diploma
• Pass at UAL Extended Diploma
• 32 UCAS tariff points from an accredited Access to Higher Education Diploma in appropriate subject
• 24 points from the International Baccalaureate, see more information about IB entry requirements.

And four GCSE passes at grade 9-4/A*-C including English (or Functional Skills English/Key Skills Communication Level 2).

Other relevant and equivalent Level 3 UK and international qualifications are considered on an individual basis, and we encourage students from diverse educational backgrounds to apply. 

Portfolio requirements

These courses don't require a portfolio. If you receive an offer, you’ll be invited to attend an Applicant Day where you can meet the course team and learn more about the course. 

*We occasionally make offers which are lower than the standard entry criteria, to students who have faced difficulties that have affected their performance and who were expected to achieve higher results. We consider the strength of our applicants’ portfolios, as well as their grades -  in these cases, a strong portfolio is especially important.

BA (Hons) course
BA (Hons) course with Professional Practice Year

The entry requirements for these courses will depend on the country your qualifications are from, please check the equivalent qualifications for your country:

• Non-UK equivalent qualifications

Any additional entry requirements listed in the UK requirements section, e.g., subject requirements, work experience or professional qualifications, also apply to international applicants applying with equivalent qualifications.

Portfolio requirements

These courses don't require a portfolio. 

BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year
BA (Hons) course with Integrated International Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year

For these courses you need to have completed 12 years of schooling (with good grades) and show strong evidence of your ability to successfully complete the programme and progress onto your chosen degree.

Any additional entry requirements listed in the UK requirements section, e.g., subject requirements, work experience or professional qualifications, also apply to international applicants applying with equivalent qualifications.

Portfolio requirements

These courses don't require a portfolio. 

English language requirements

To study at UCA, you'll need to have a certain level of English language skill. And so, to make sure you meet the requirements of your course, we ask for evidence of your English language ability, please check the level of English language required:

• English language requirements