Introduction

I find it symbolically apposite that the symposium at which this chapter originated as a paper fell almost exactly at the climax of the first year of the delivery, at the University of Liverpool, of an MBA in Music Industries (MBA MI), a degree for which I act as Course Director. This particular MBA is the first of its kind in the world. ‘The first of its kind in the world’: this phrase cannot but sound like an advertising slogan, and an archaic one at that (at least in terms of the accelerated history of popular culture). It comes with an almost irresistible connotative ‘pre-echo’: ‘Roll up, roll up, see the first MBA of its kind in the world.’ Indeed, the first year of the degree owes a debt, if not to P. T. Barnum himself, then certainly to the circus. There have been death-defying high-wire acts, leaps from one trapeze to another, bareback rides, flaming hoops and custard pies – much as there inevitably are whenever any new venture is undertaken. In short, the course ‘on the page’ is not the course in the lecture theatre, since, from the outset, there has been a constant need to adjust learning methods and teaching goals to the needs of students. There has also been a need to make a Popular Music Studies perspective on the music industry harmonise with, or at least exist alongside, an orthodox management approach to teaching business. Taking all factors together, and within a much wider context of novelty, there have been tensions around exactly what needs to be taught as the ‘music industry’ and why. In this chapter I want to review not so much the teaching experience itself, nor even (necessarily) the goals of the course. Rather, my main aim is to isolate and examine the source of these (arguably general) tensions in the emergent area of music-industry education. My reason for choosing this aim is driven by my own sense of unease that arises from having the responsibility to deliver a coherent, working understanding of music-industrial practice. As music teachers, we are all present at the birth of music-industry education – and already, confusions and misconceptions about how business is conducted in and by the industry can be seen, arguably at least, to be apparent.