Christopher Daniels
Assistant Professor of Music Business
Music & Entertainment Industry Studies
University of Colorado Denver
Campus Box 162, Arts 288M
Denver, CO 80217
Chris.Daniels@ucdenver.edu
Abstract
I took over the Music Management (artist management) class from John Kellogg in fall 2007. Both that class and the very first class our students take, Intro to Music Business, were so far behind the curve that the college was actually using texts that presented contracts based on the sale of cassette tapes. So over the past year I have worked to completely revise the content of those two courses, researched and introduced a brand new course on the business of concert promotion (which was offered in other programs similar to ours around the country and missing from ours), and worked with Storm Gloor and Stan Soocher and the MEIS department Chair(s) to completely revise our department’s curriculum. After taking two state-of-the-art courses this summer and fall online from Berklee College of Music and after attending my second Billboard conference in New York I believe that the ‘content’ of the three primary courses I teach is as close to industry standard as is possible -- in an industry that is changing at digital speed. The task at hand is now two fold: (1) to incorporate new methods of delivery for that content – moving away from the standard test/paper paradigm to one that incorporates weekly online investigative regimens in both the cyber and actual community (2) to weave in as much ‘feedback’ from student incoming and outgoing assessments; alumni interviews with successful artists, music business professionals and recording professionals; and statistical data from those individuals and the greater MEIS, Berklee and Macalester community that I can gather - to make these three courses and the delivery of this revised content the best in the country.