If you are a musician but you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket and hope that you will be discovered one day, then you may want to consider completing a music business degree. This will ensure that you can find work in the industry, in very good positions, while at the same time being more capable of managing your own career. During a good degree program, you will learn the fundamental elements of both music and the world of business, while at the same time getting hands on experience by taking part in internships. The reason why you should choose music business rather than regular business for this is that it will also give you the opportunity to perfect your performance skills, should you also play an instrument or sing.
Why You Should Manage Your Own Music Career
There are many famous musicians out there, but very few, if any, manage their own career. It is certainly true that, should you hit the big time, you shouldn’t attempt to manage your own career. However, if you are only just starting, there really is no reason why you should have to pay someone else to do what you are perfectly capable of doing yourself. Not just that, not a day goes by where there isn’t some story of an artist entering in a legal dispute with their manager, and that really isn’t something you want to subject yourself to, particularly at the start of your career. Since a degree will teach you how to promote and market yourself, how to publish your music, and how to manage your person, you can avoid all of this.
Of course, most people don’t enroll in a four year bachelor’s degree program and pay tuition fees for it just because they want to manage themselves. It would be a whole lot cheaper to hire someone else to do it and take the chance of disputes. However, completing a degree does also mean that, while you hope to get your big break, you can get your foot in the door. Who you know is hugely important in the music industry, after all. And the other thing is that it is a ruthless industry, one in which people can stop loving you as quickly as they started loving you, and having that business degree would mean that you don’t have to exit the industry as whole.
Plus, if you are considering going to college, you are likely to still be quite young. Most people your age still have a backpack full of ideals and dreams. But by the time you are in your 20s and are moving towards completion of your degree, you may start to feel like becoming a performing artist was just a pipedream that you’re no longer interested in. Luckily, you will have lots of important business skills under your belt by that time, which you can easily transfer to a wealth of other industries as well.
