2024/25 Undergraduate Module Catalogue

MUS1211 The Music Industries

20 creditsClass Size: 30

Module manager: Ellis Jones
Email: e.n.jones@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable

Year running 2024/25

Module replaces

MUSS1816 Introduction to the Music Business

This module is approved as a discovery module

Module summary

Today’s music business is interconnected. Managers and artists work across live music, recordings, and branding to build multi-faceted careers. Labels, platforms, and media conglomerates co-invest in each other’s activities. New global centres of pop music production are creating complex connections with old epicentres in the UK and US. The aim of this module is to reveal these connections, enabling a holistic understanding that is vital not just for musicians seeking success, but also for reflecting on our everyday engagements with music.

Objectives

By the end of this module, students will be able to comprehend a range of sources – from industry reports to trade press – and to combine these sources to demonstrate a holistic understanding of how the aspects of the music industries are interconnected.

Seminar discussions focussed on specific important contemporary music businesses will enable students to highlight, critique and compare specific management practices and approaches to enterprise development.

A portfolio of reflective activities will enable students to situate their own music-making and music-listening within the wider world of music business.

Lectures will introduce students to core areas of music business history as well as a range of contemporary challenges facing the music industries.

Learning outcomes
On successful completion of the module you will be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of key music business terms and concepts.

2. Identify and use relevant methodologies in the study of music-related enterprise.

3. Situate everyday musical practice in a wider music industries context.

Skills Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the module you will be able to:

4. Find and validate appropriate sources to develop understanding of contemporary challenges in the music industries.

5. Reflect on your own engagement with the music business, and relate this to your learning, achievement and personal and professional development.

6. Communicate in ways appropriate to the discipline

Syllabus

Details of the syllabus will be provided on the Minerva organisation (or equivalent) for the module

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Lecture	10	1.00	10.00
Seminar	9	1.00	9.00
Independent online learning hours			13.00
Private study hours			168.00
Total Contact hours			19.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			200.00

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

In weeks 2–5, students will be set 250-word tasks reflecting on an area of the music industries, drawing on their own recent experience. Students will be asked to post these on a VLE area, where peers and instructors can respond. Assessment 1 (‘The music industries and me’) compiles these four tasks into a single 1,000 word submission. Accordingly, students will already have received some formative feedback on the content of this assessment before submission.



For Assessment 2 (‘Mapping the music industries’), four seminar sessions will be dedicated to development of students’ individual ideas, including time for short individual presentations. They will additionally benefit from formative feedback provided on Assessment 1.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Portfolio	1,000 words (4 x 250 word tasks)	40.00
Assignment	Annotated diagram plus 500 word summary	60.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 15/02/2024

Disclaimer

Browse Other Catalogues

• Undergraduate module catalogue
• Taught Postgraduate module catalogue
• Undergraduate programme catalogue
• Taught Postgraduate programme catalogue

Errors, omissions, failed links etc should be notified to the Catalogue Team.PROD