MUSIC INDUSTRIES AND POPULAR CULTURE
The popular music industries are a vital part of the media industries. Music is the soundtrack to our lives. It provides the score to our quietest moments alone and our loudest parties with friends. Music helps us create and understand our identities and those of others. It is both a form of subversive activism and one of the most commercially valuable commodities in the media industries. Explore the contemporary popular music industries and the roles businesses, artists, audiences, fans, and technologies play in shaping music as a media industry. Focus specifically on the disruption that the internet, digital technologies, and social media have ushered in over the last two decades and the new ways artists, listeners, and businesses are discovering, promoting, sharing and experiencing music. Talk about the music you love, how it gets made, and why that matters for how we understand creative industries, ourselves, and each other.
Prerequisites & course information
Requisites: Sophomore standing Course Designation: Core GenEd - Humanities & Arts Breadth - Humanities Level - Intermediate L&S Credit - L&S Liberal Arts and Science Repeatable for Credit: No Last Taught: Fall 2026 Learning Outcomes: 1. Assess the structure of the contemporary popular music industries, with attention to the inequalities it creates for artists and workers Audience: Undergraduate 2. Analyze the role the music industries play in governing the circulation, discovery, and experience of popular music Audience: Undergraduate 3. Employ audio production tools to create media about music and the music industries Audience: Undergraduate 4. Develop communication skills for writing and speaking critically about the intersections of music, popular culture, identity, and power Audience: Undergraduate Learning Outcomes: 1. Assess the structure of the contemporary popular music industries, with attention to the inequalities it creates for artists and workers Audience: Undergraduate 2. Analyze the role the music industries play in governing the circulation, discovery, and experience of popular music Audience: Undergraduate 3. Employ audio production tools to create media about music and the music industries Audience: Undergraduate 4. Develop communication skills for writing and speaking critically about the intersections of music, popular culture, identity, and power Audience: Undergraduate
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026-2027