Goals in Music Business Field - Admission/Application Essay Example

Music Business As much as our country’s music industry is one of the most established in the world, I believe as a country we can do more in terms of promoting and harnessing new talent. For this reason, one of my goals in the Music Business Field is to make a contribution towards the further growth in the industry. My second goal in the Music Business Field is to help alleviate the problem of unemployment that is facing the country right now by providing the youth and other talented people in this field with an opportunity to gain meaningful employment either as singers, dancers, music promoters, instrumentalists, music distributor etc. Thirdly, I will aim at promoting the studying of music in schools. Music as a subject is taught in many schools but in majority schools, it is not highly regarded by both the students and the schools’ administration. This has led to a situation whereby parents are discouraging their kids from taking music as a subject and those kids that are regarded as high performers are instead encouraged to pursue careers in the traditionally highly regarded areas such as medicine or law. Finally, I will aim at instilling professionalism in the field of music. By this, I mean that the performers, the managers, promoters, distributers and other stakeholders in this field should conduct their activities with some level of professionalism and where necessary, they should have some form of certification. Having stated the goals that I hope to attain in the Music Business field, I ought to outline the measures that I plan to undertake in order to achieve these goals. For the case of promoting growth in the industry, I plan to set up avenues where new and young talent can be discovered and harnessed. For this reason, I plan to set up a fund where people can make contributions and the money from this fund will go towards the setting up of a music academy for kids below 13 years. I also intend to set up a small recording studio and offer these studio services at an affordable price to anyone wishing to record a song. Last but not least, I am planning to establish an online website for the purpose of lobbying the government to increase funding for music programs in our schools so that music as a subject is taken seriously by both the teachers and the students in those schools. Studying music at graduate level gives me an edge over that person who posses raw talent in music but hasn’t gone through formal training in music. This is because it will enable me develop a deeper understanding of the issues concerning the music industry in addition to being better equipped in managing a career in music than that person who did not receive any formal training in the field (Feinstein 78). During my stay in college, I have undertaken studies in Management Science Major and Music minor. Through my major education, I have been able to gain excellent insights into the field of finance in addition to strengthening my analytical skills. For instance, I had a chance to analyze market trends for different commercial products including margin trading, bond trading and industrial investment fund in the Financial Market class; I was able to discuss the company capital budgeting decision, together with the methods of evaluation and ranking of investment projects, the company preferred method of capital structure, dividend policy decisions, corporate taxes, mergers and acquisitions in the in the corporate finance class. My summer internship as a Creative Assistant in Warner/Chappell Music Publishing Agency Beijing has prepared me with interpersonal and communication skills through communicating with exclusive composers and acting assisting the Publishing Manager with duties such as: communicating with our exclusive composers as well as potential ones, arranging and revising publishing contracts to ensure that both our company and composers receive payment when their compositions are used commercially such as in TV, films and in public events, monitoring and reporting where/when compositions are used to aid in the collection of royalty and finally participating in decision making by selecting songs from plenty of demos in order to provide for frequent updates for our internal database (Perkins 150). We are all human and we all have our weaknesses and limitations. For me, it is the tendency to always insist in things being done my way. Sometimes, I have suffered the consequences of this behavior whereby my way turns out to be the wrong way and thus I have to seek for advice from a more knowledgeable person (Wikstrom 98). I am also a workaholic and this has made me at times to overlook certain aspects of my life such as engaging in recreational activities. Finally, I tend to be over ambitious when I want do something and occasionally this has led me to stray away from the realistic perspective of an aspect in situations where my ambitions are not realistic given the prevailing set of circumstances. As a student of New York University I have been accorded with an opportunity to improve on my weaknesses for instance, I have had to work with teams and by and by, I have been able to learn to accommodate the views and ideas of other people as they are all equally competent in their fields of study. The lecturers in the institution have also assisted me in formulating realistic ideas and I have come to appreciate the importance of having realistic ambitions and expectations in life. I have also taken several personal initiatives to improve on my weaknesses one of them by my joining of the University’s Young Entrepreneurs association. Additionally I enrolled as Creative Assistant in Warner/Chappell Music Publishing Agency in Beijing during my summer vacation. As a graduate level student, it is imperative for one to carry out a proper research in my field of study. Some of the research topics that can be explored in the contemporary music industry are: What challenges are currently facing the music industry? How has advancements made in the field of technology impacted on the music industry? Finally, what methods can be used to improve on royalty collection in the industry? In addressing the topic concerning the challenges currently facing the music industry I would first of all first seek to identify the problems that are being faced by the stakeholders in the music field. Secondly, I would explore on the causes of these problems such as the reduction in revenues for players in this field due to the impact of technology that has allowed people to download music online free of charge. I would then carry out a quantitative analysis on the impact of these problems that would later lead me in making informed conclusions on the same. Finally, I would come up with a summary of my conclusions (Perkins 201). Work cited Wikstrom, Patrick. The music industry: Music in the cloud. New Jersey: Polity Publishers, 2009. Feinsten, Jonathan. The business of music: the definitive guide to the music industry. Boston: Wiley & Sons, 2010. Perkins, Randi. Navigating the music industry: current issues and business models. London: Harper Collins, 2009. Read More