Entrepreneurship Center for Music Director Jeffrey Nytch says he's seen the center take big strides in the past year, but he sees even more in the trail-blazing program's future.
Like any good entrepreneur, Jeff Nytch knows your work is never done.
Since coming on as the director of the Entrepreneurship Center for Music (ECM) in 2009—after what he calls a “15-year odyssey of freelance composing and performing, teaching, helping out a small business and running an arts organization”—Assistant Professor Nytch says he’s still trying to inspire in students the same epiphany that led him here:
"Entrepreneurship isn't something you do only if you can't cut it as a musician. It informs your creative life, and is very complementary to music,” says Nytch. “Nobody taught me that. I had to learn through trial and error.” Indeed, it took him years to make the connection, but through the ECM, CU-Boulder music students have the unique opportunity to be prepared for the real world before they even enter it.
Yet because of a common misconception—that you only need to learn business skills if you don’t have the chops to be a full-time musician—Nytch says only 20 percent of College of Music students are enrolled in ECM courses.
“That’s comparable to our peers, but we’re still letting students get out the door without taking advantage of these tools,” says Nytch.
That’s why a couple of changes this year for the ECM are so important. First, fall 2014 marked the first time the center offered a Certificate in Music Entrepreneurship. It pairs a business minor with courses specifically designed to teach music students career skills. In addition, a gift from Music Advisory Board member Jan Burton created a $2,000 scholarship to help defray the cost of the certificate for two or three students starting this fall.
With 12 students pursuing the certificate in just its first year, it’s a milestone for the innovative program.
The startup years
The ECM at CU-Boulder was the first of its kind in the country. Founded by former Dean Daniel Sher and then-director Catherine Fitterman in the late 90s, the goal was simple:
To create “a resource for understanding how students could take their talent and skills, developed by our superb faculty, and parlay those into a meaningful career, as each student would define it for her or himself,” says Sher.
The founders saw the center as a requisite preparation for entry into an evolving industry. “The music marketplace requires ever more innovative programming, excellent communication skills and non-traditional venues for presentation,” Sher explains. “Challenges await our students and they need the tools, strategies and experiences to anticipate and meet those challenges and to transform them into opportunities.”
That’s a trend that peer institutions were noticing, too. Before long, similar programs started popping up at places like Indiana University, Berklee and Juilliard.
Even young musicians have started to realize the importance of playing their horn and developing their business savvy. Daniel Mullan will graduate this year with a Bachelor’s of Music in Saxophone Performance and the Certificate in Music Entrepreneurship. He plans to move to New York to get a job at a record label.
“The skills I learned from the ECM will be at the forefront of my career,” Mullan says. “I learned how to advocate for myself as a musician and as a professional. The ECM taught me how to recognize opportunities and find unmet needs in music and in other aspects of my life.”
Composition graduate Keane Southard says he learned in the ECM to take matters into his own hands. Rather than wait for musicians to discover his work, he's brought his work to them.
"I've done a lot of work to market my music and keep in touch with performers and conductors, and it has been paying off, both literally and in the number of performances and commissions I've been receiving," Southard says. "I realized that I can create my own opportunities and realize my biggest ideas and dreams."
From up-start to requirement
CU-Boulder has always been a leader in music entrepreneurship. When Nytch was hired, he became the first—and still to this day, the only—tenure-track faculty member to lead an entrepreneurship program in a music department.
The next big thing? Expanded course offerings. Maybe a new joint music/business degree. Or making entrepreneurship classes a requirement for graduation. But Nytch says his main focus now is graduate students.
“Reality is closer for them. Undergrads have many years of school ahead of them. But with graduate students, there are better opportunities because they get it.”
There are also plans for a future endowment to support the program’s scholarship. And the College of Music’s strategic plan will emphasize entrepreneurship with a dedicated task force of faculty and staff.
With the continuing support of college leadership and other faculty, Nytch hopes he can do more to get students’ attention. “You have to create multiple points of entry, like the certificate, the scholarships, electives and the workshops we do every Wednesday.”
Meanwhile, Nytch’s epiphany—that learning business skills doesn’t mean you failed as a musician—resonates with Mullan. “This change in perspective got me hooked for more entrepreneurship classes and internships that are leading me down my career path.”
Nytch also teaches by example. Just this semester, the CU Wind Symphony performed one of his compositions, Moving Violations. “I got to demonstrate through my work how entrepreneurship empowers creative ideas. That was so important to me.”
That lesson is starting to gain traction. But as Nytch says, with entrepreneurship, there’s always more to do.
