Seminar in Music Industry
Northeastern University
Semesters taught: Fall 2025; Spring 2025; Fall 2024; Spring 2024; Fall 2023; Spring 2023; Fall 2022; Spring 2021; Fall 2020; Spring 2020; Fall 2019; Fall 2015; Spring 2015; Fall 2014; Spring 2014; Fall 2013
Course description
In this capstone course for music industry students, we explore contemporary analyses and issues with an eye toward critically assessing and engaging the music industries. Each student brings to the classroom a unique set of skills and experiences, including those grounded in coursework and experiential learning (such as co-ops, internships, research, service learning, study abroad, and other activities). During seminar, we learn together as a class from these individualized experiences and sets of expertise—the sum of our knowledge, in essence, is greater than its individual parts. Through critical discussion, debate, in-class activities, and individual projects we will grapple with issues and problems that each one of us will face as future music industry professionals.
What are the goals of the music industries? Aside from securing a job, what do you hope to accomplish as a professional after you graduate? In what ways might you work to improve the music industries throughout your career? What challenges and opportunities will you face? What challenges and opportunities face the music industries overall? My overall goal in this course is to prepare you intellectually and critically for your profession. You will reflect upon, distill, apply, and enhance the knowledge and critical thinking skills you have accumulated through your prior courses, experiential learning, and professional experiences. You will develop insights and skills that will enable you to question entrenched music industry practices and hierarchies. Through debate, analysis, and weighing the potential challenges and opportunities posed by specific topics and trajectories, you will make professional recommendations regarding current issues and future developments within the music industries in your writing assignments, classroom discussions, in-class presentations, and individual research.
READINGS
In this course, I assign a wide variety of readings, swapping several out every time I teach it again. These include academic readings from a variety of disciplines, industry reports, policy white papers, and journalism about the music industry, among others. Periodically, I have also assigned full books on the syllabus, which I’ve listed below (alphabetically by author):
Nancy K. Baym, Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate Work of Connection (New York University Press, 2018; taught Fall 2019, Spring 2020)
Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, Joseph Bizup, and William T. Fitzgerald, The Craft of Research, 4th ed. (The University of Chicago Press, 2016; taught Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024)
Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, Joseph Bizup, and William T. Fitzgerald, The Craft of Research, 5th ed. (The University of Chicago Press, 2024; taught Spring 2025, Fall 2025)
David Bruenger, Making Money, Making Music: History and Core Concepts (University of California Press, 2016; taught Fall 2019, Spring 2020)
David Bruenger, Create, Produce, Consume: New Models for Understanding Music Business (University of California Press, 2019; taught Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2022, Spring 2023)
Glenn McDonald, You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song: How Streaming Changes Music (Canbury Press, 2024; taught Spring 2025)
Donald S. Passman, All You Need to Know about the Music Business, 8th ed. (Free Press, 2012; taught Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015)
Liz Pelly, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (Atria Books, 2025; taught Fall 2025)
Carl Wilson, Let’s Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste, 1st ed. (Continuum, 2007; taught Spring 2014)
Carl Wilson, Let’s Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste, 2nd ed. (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014; taught Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015)