National entrepreneurs offer workshop for musicians looking to forge own career
Janel Shoun |
The Lipscomb University Department of Music and the Center for Entrepreneurship present “Forge Your Own Career in Music: Music Entrepreneurship Workshop.” This one day, free seminar on March 26 will provide marketing, self-promotion and business guidelines for those hoping to make a career of music.
Music colleges nationwide annually graduate some 16,000 performance majors into a job market with only 15 full-time, year-round orchestras, according to the American Symphony Orchestra League. In popular music, the chances of “making it big” are so slim they have become not just conventional wisdom, but have inspired various tales of coincidental “discovery.”
With the demand for jobs far outstripping the supply in the music industry, the Drapkin Institute for Music Entrepreneurship has made it its mission to advance the teaching of proven models in entrepreneurship that have been successfully implemented in other areas of our society. Such methods are regularly taught at institutions ranging from film schools, to the MIT Media Lab, to business schools nationwide, but have not generally been applied to music.
The Drapkin Institute, headquartered in one of America’s premier music capitals, Austin, Texas, will conduct the seminar, to be held in Lipscomb’s Ward Hall from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and designed to introduce basic market and organizational fundamentals to participants, equipping them to become leaders in the arts and start new organizations.
National experts in e-commerce, copyright, business strategy and executive recruiting from America’s music capitals will speak at the workshop.
Workshop speakers will include:
Mark Montgomery Entrepreneur-in-residence for Claritas Capital,
in Nashville
Over the past 15 years Montgomery has worked with hundreds of entertainment and corporate clients including Sony, Kanye West, Keith Urban, RIM/Blackberry, Bon Jovi, Pearl Jam, Best Buy, Rascal Flatts and General Motors. He was the co-founder of echo, a Nashville-based digital media and services company focused on building communities around entertainment brands and is a pioneer in the e-commerce and business-to-consumer marketing space.
Michael Drapkin
Dean of the Drapkin Institute in Austin, Texas
A former Honolulu Symphony clarinetist, Drapkin also served as chair of e-commerce management at Columbia University’s executive information technology management program and runs the Classical Crossover showcases for the South by Southwest music festival.
Michael Harrington
Associate professor of music management at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey
Formerprofessor of intellectual property and music business at Belmont University, Harrington has served as chair of the College Music Society's Music Industry Outreach Committee and has been sought out by the New York Times, CNN, the TODAY Show, Billboard, Rolling Stone, Money Magazine and many others on music business and copyright matters.
Joe Ivey Executive director of the Lipscomb Center for
Entrepreneurship in Nashville
Ivey has experience in business start-ups, family businesses and large public companies, including a former Fortune 500 company. He serves as the clinical professor of management at the Lipscomb University College of Business.
Suzy Drapkin
CEO of CareerAchievers, executive director
of the Drapkin Institute
Drapkin has expertise working in the public sector as a clinical and career counselor, educational trainer, vocational evaluator and rehabilitation coordinator, as well as in the business world working as an executive recruiter and consultant.
“Given the troubled economy and the constant changes and turmoil in the music industry, it is more important than ever for musicians to develop the entrepreneurial skills needed to promote themselves and to create their own musical opportunities,” said Sally Reid, chair of the Lipscomb music department.
“Drapkin and Harrington are national leaders in the blossoming area of music entrepreneurship. Musicians from all genres, whether doing freelance or studio work, performing with the symphony, playing in a professional chamber ensemble or playing the local club circuit, will find useful information at this workshop. Students in the Nashville community will also experience a great introduction to the entrepreneurial approach for careers in music.”
A continental breakfast and networking luncheon are available for $20.Registration is required to participate. Call 615.966.5929 or log onto music.lipscomb.edu to register.
“Forge Your Own Career in Music: Music Entrepreneurship Workshop,” is sponsored by the Lipscomb University Department of Music, within the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Lipscomb Entrepreneurship Center, within the College of Business.
The workshop is part of four days of events focused on entrepreneurship to launch theCenter for Entrepreneurship at Lipscomb.