At The A&R Foundation we believe that the key to starting and operating a successful music business is access to education and ongoing support during each stage of your businesses lifecycle. We’ve developed an expansive curriculum to help address the different challenges you may face as a creative entrepreneur who is starting, growing, and managing their music business.
We deliver our curriculum through classroom style workshops that lay the foundation for each topic and encourage peer to peer networking. For each workshop you attend, you will gain access to one hour of professional coaching with one of our music business coaches to discuss what you learned in the workshop, ask additional questions, or review work you’ve completed.
Each workshop is part of a “track”, with a total of four tracks and eighteen workshops. While you are able to attend the workshops in any order you’d like, we do recommend attending them in the order we’ve selected as each workshop is meant to build on what was learned in the previous one. A complete list of our upcoming workshops and their locations will be coming soon.
Please note, at this time we are offering these workshops in person as part of our pilot programing. Upon completion of our pilot program, we intend to provide our workshops in a hybrid environment as well as a self service on demand format.
Track One: Entrepreneur Fundamentals
Track Description: At the core of every successful business is a set of goals: a strong business plan, an understanding of finances, and the right legal structure. Our Entrepreneur Fundamentals track will walk you through the process of creating a set of SMART goals, writing a business plan, creating your first set of financial projections, selecting a formal business structure, and reviewing key legal considerations before launching your music business. By the end of this track you will have a strong foundation on which to build your music business.
- Module 1: SMART Goal Setting
- Module 2: Business Planning
- Module 3: Financial Projections
- Module 4: Business Formation
- Module 5: Legal Considerations for your Music Business
Track Two: Business Financial Education
Track Description: Numbers mean everything in the music industry. Likes, followers, streams, views, all lead to a greater level of income and success, but none of those are nearly as important as understanding your music business finances. More importantly, you will need to know how to track, interpret, and speak to your finances. Tracking and understanding how money moves in and out of your business will enable you to make informed decisions, create accurate budgets, and ultimately understand just how much you can take home at the end of the day from your creative endeavors. Simply put: “living in your numbers” gives you the best shot at making your passion a full time gig.
In our Business Financial Education track we explore what options are available for financing your music business – signing to a label or working five jobs aren’t your only options. We’ll dive into how to set up a strong bookkeeping system to track the money that comes in and out of your business. We’ll then demystify how to generate and read financial statements – a key aspect of being able to obtain financing – and finally we’ll tie everything together by talking through how to manage cash flow which is actually more important than profit! We’ll also review how to create a proper budget to help guide you through your day to day business decisions.
- Module 1: Funding Your Music Business
- Module 2: Bookkeeping for Creatives
- Module 3: Financial Statements
- Module 4: Cash Flow & Budgeting
Track Three: Business Operations
Track Description: Setting up a formal business is a huge step forward in a performing Artist’s career, but it’s just the first step! In order for your music business to become sustainable you will need to ensure you have the right systems and procedures in place to help you stay compliant with state and federal laws, protect your interests, and operate your business effectively.
In our Business Operations track we’ll discuss what to look for when selecting a business bank account, what the role of a merchant processor is, common contracts you might encounter in your music business, how to ensure you are collecting all of the money owed to you though PRO’s and copyright registration, and finally the importance of having a publishing administrator.
- Module 1: Business Banking
- Module 2: Merchant Processing
- Module 3: Understanding Music Business Contracts
- Module 4: Performing Rights Organizations / Copyrights
- Module 5: Publishing Administration
Track Four: Creating Sustainability
Track description: Business is about relationships, with your fans, your peers, and industry professionals. How you start, cultivate, and leverage all of those relationships is key in growing your music business.
In our Creating Sustainability track we will go over the roles that PR and Marketing play in developing different types of relationships – as well as the difference between the two. We’ll work together on building your quick pitch, aka an elevator pitch, to help you be effective when attending networking events, and last, but not least we’ll walk you through how to effectively build a long term relationship once you’ve made a connection.
- Module 1: Music PR
- Module 2: Music Marketing
- Module 3: Networking / Quick pitch
- Module 4: Relationship building