Music Business/Management Major Turns 20

Hours before Coldplay’s sold-out show at TD Garden in Boston, 14 students in Professor Jeff Dorenfeld’s “Concert Touring” class were invited backstage, onstage, and later, to occupy choice seats behind the stage for the concert.

 This rare tour, complete with a candid Q&A session and a chance to pose with Chris Martin’s graffiti-painted piano, was given by key members of the band’s road crew, who were flattered and excited to do it, according to Jared Braverman ’07. A graduate of Berklee’s Music Business/Management Department and a former student of Dorenfeld, Braverman is a tour director for North American touring at Live Nation. A concert clinic is a component of Dorenfeld’s course and Braverman set up the special Berklee opportunity at his former professor’s request. The comped tickets were a bonus.

“I remember being a student in his class and how cool the [concert] clinic was,” Braverman said later. “It’s an honor to pay it forward.”

MB/M marks its 20th anniversary this year, and the Coldplay clinic illustrates some of the reasons for its success: vital music industry connections, hands-on focus, passion for the business, and the ongoing, sustaining relationships among renowned faculty, successful alumni, and industry leaders in pursuit of opportunities, knowledge, and reinvention.

And it is in keeping with the message that while everybody wants to be a star onstage, rewards—creative and remunerative—can be found behind the scenes. And even if you are making it as a musician, you need more than a little business acumen to pay the bills and avoid being ripped off.

Department Chair Don Gorder (see sidebar on page 37), who founded the department in 1992, was recruited by Berklee to develop a program for student musicians to learn about the business side of the industry. Since that time, it has become one of the largest majors at Berklee, with 363 students in the 2011–2012 academic year and 36 courses offerings. This fall, the scope has become international, with the launch at Berklee Valencia of a master’s degree program in global entertainment, which was developed by Gorder.

“There is no other music business department as distinctive, vast, forward-thinking, and connected,” contends Darla Hanley, the dean of the Professional Education Division, which includes the Music Business/Management Department. “We know the music industry is changing, and we want to contribute to the discussion and the future.”

Associate Professor George Howard, who manages Carly Simon, relishes the opportunity to teach rising artists how to apply business principles to their passion— music—and to demonstrate how creativity relates to business. “We’re not selling widgets,” Howard states. “We are selling extensions of somebody’s soul.”

 

Gaining Momentum

From the start, the department was bolstered by its highly regarded, close-knit faculty and their industry connections as it struggled to achieve full recognition at a music college whose primary focus was and remains performance. It wasn’t until 2010 that the department relocated from the basement of 22 the Fenway to more spacious, modern quarters on the second floor of Berklee’s 7 Haviland Street building. “It felt like a scappy startup,” says Panos Panay ’94—the founder and CEO of Sonicbids, a matchmaking site for bands and music promoters—of the department’s early years. “The students were thirsty for knowledge, and the teachers were eager to impart it.”

Those were the days when students would write papers by hand and dream of working for a record label. Dorenfeld, the former manager of the band Boston, accumulated a boxful of riders, contracts, and lease agreements while teaching the first touring course. He made an offer to a student who had collected all the documents in a binder, “I’ll buy that from you for 30 bucks,” Dorenfeld proffered.

From the start, faculty members focused on what have become department hallmarks: building relationships, and the need for adaptability. In a rough business, the accent is on the human connection.

“The accessibility of the faculty really made a difference,” notes Gregg Stein ’00, the vice president of mass marketing for the MUSIC group. Echoing other alumni, Stein says that students considered professors great resources for knowledge and networking while at Berklee, and trusted advisers in the years afterward.

“The sense is ‘You are not forgotten,’” says Kim Gerlach, ’03, who works in publisher relations for RightsFlow at Google, which provides mechanical licensing services and royalty payment technology. “It’s never just a one-way show. There’s always a mutual trust. That’s why I’m in touch nearly 10 years later.”

A high priority for the department is keeping in contact with alumni in the music industry who return to campus to participate in events educating faculty, students, and the public. “In college you are in a bubble,” Panay says. “We are the needle that can burst the bubble every once in a while.”

So, too, are the industry leaders. “Nothing is as exciting as when you’re in a room with engaged students learning,” says Mathew Knowles, the founder, CEO, and president of Music World Entertainment and a panelist for this year’s “Business of Gospel Symposium and for Envisioning 21st-Century Music Business Models in 2009. “I view it as a privilege.”

For students, the focus on the real world extends to extracurricular activities, such as the Music and Entertainment Industry Student Association, which makes annual trips to New York and Los Angeles to visit music companies as well as internships pivotal for gaining a foothold in the industry.

“We do value Berklee graduates,” says Trudy Lartz, the vice president of sales at Nielsen’s Media and Entertainment. “Having experience with our system is key.”

From the beginning, internships have been an important component, says Gorder, who quickly worked to improve the internship program he found upon his arrival at Berklee. Gorder recalls the early years of the program when he would call his industry contacts seeking internship placements for his students. Today, says Gorder, the reputation of the well-prepared Berklee music business student is such that there are “more sites than students. They want our interns.”

What sets Berklee music business students apart from those in traditional business majors is that they are musicians, not suits, making it easier to form a bond and connect with the artist. “Berklee students fully understand both sides of the spectrum. It’s wonderful to see two sides of the brain working together,” says Lartz, who recently visited campus to participate in a discussion on startup ventures and the music rights frontier.

In 2007 the introduction of the audition requirement for admission to Berklee, however, reduced the number of music business majors. In 2006, the program was the largest major on campus, with 565 students. Concerned that the audition prerequisite might deny admission to the next music industry mastermind, Gorder has been working with the Office of Admissions to “tweak” the requirement for music business majors. One possibility is to give more weight to other factors in applications from prospective nonperformance majors.

“I honestly don’t know if I would get in now,” Gerlach says. She is not the only alum to voice that concern.

As for the future, Music Business/Management faculty members are optimistic about the industry and have ambitions for the department. The belief is that live music is here to stay and new business models are emerging in all sectors.

“We want to be the place that is crucial in developing the next leaders of the entertainment industry and developing systems which fairly compensate artists and promote the art and commerce of music, says Assistant Chair John Kellogg, who is also a practicing entertainment lawyer.

The department is considering adding minors, Kellogg says, citing the need for a focus on artist development, and “what it takes to deal not only with celebrity, but also the stress, of being an artist.”

Recognizing that the music business is becoming “more entrepreneurial and less corporate,” Gorder speaks of plans to hatch an “entrepreneurial incubator,” focusing on student start-up projects. “It’s no longer an era of gatekeepers,” Howard notes. “Anybody can enter the arena. People who use the tools most creatively will win.”

“The new generation will come up with new business models,” predicts Neeltje Mooring, a lecturer at Inholland University collaborating with the department on international music publishing and licensing. “Music is still a way to communicate with people,” she says, noting that available jobs will not be at companies that make records and CDs but at those that produce brands like Coca-Cola, which is investing more in music. “Brands will have music departments where students can work,” she says.

Nobody can accurately predict the future of the business, but one thing is certain: Berklee students will be in the mix. “I can tell you,” Hanley says, “we are going to do things we can’t even imagine.”