On this page, you can find the Culminating Experience (CE) Projects for all graduate students from the Berklee College of Music master’s program Global Entertainment and Music Business (GEMB) from 2015 – present. Click on any title for more information and access to the full paper and other deliverables (if available).
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Berklee Dance Party
Chris Choi
2016Berklee Dance Party (BDE) is an EDM party brand hosting a set of regular dance party events for Berklee students and Erasmus Valencia, which are performed by Berklee DJs, especially focused on mainstream EDM music.
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UNDERSTANDING METALHEADS AS NICHE CONSUMERS TO ADVANCE THE MUSIC ECOSYSTEM
Srishti Das
2016This paper explores metal music and related subgenres as niche markets and studies the behaviors and personality traits of metalheads in terms of consumptions and beliefs. The paper uses metalheads as a representation of niche genres of music due to their high fidelity and passion for the specified music. In the course of the paper we highlight different personality traits of metalheads and draw comparisons in the behaviors with that of other niche genres. The paper talks about the importance of niche genres like Metal to stay authentic to itself while also talks about the difference between niche and underground. The methodology used in this paper included first hand data collection to analyse data in the form of: surveys, literature review, focus groups and interviews with record label professionals. Business models and practices of the metal music ecosystem are still largely traditional and needing to adapt to a more versatile means of conducting business. The music industry has revolutionised since the beginning of digitalisation. The introduction of peer to peer applications and streaming has changed the music business. The introduction of technology has shifted the paradigm of businesses, where the incorporation, influence and induction is a necessity in order to be ‘successful’. The need for new, inventive and creative business strategies is at its utmost importance at this moment.
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Tidal: Case Study
Queade N. Dweh
2016The purpose of this case is to highlight the elements of Tidal, and how their business benefits artists, consumers, and the music industry. Today more than ever, consumers nearly have unlimited access to information, however still lack in knowledge the roots of the topic of music streaming. Outlined in the case study lies the competitive advantages of Tidal, and areas of growth that hint to outliving the streaming wars through its dedication to uniting artists. Tidal’s lane exists to grab the attention through exclusives, but also implementing program that promote emerging independent artists.
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Booking Agency Business Plan
Valeria Gonzalez Leyva
2016To create a business plan for a booking agency that facilitates relations between Spanish/Portuguese speaking countries and the US. The agency will enable artists within these countries to reach national and international audiences through live performances, as well as international artists looking to work within the Spanish/Portuguese markets. Opportunities for US
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TEDxBerkleeValencia
Garrett Gretsch
2016For my culminating experience I will be working as a partnership coordinator for TEDxBerkleeValencia. In addition to the normal requirements, I also plan to take on a role as marketing technology advisor. I’ll show the team how to maximize efficiency by utilizing specific technologies useful in start-up companies and small businesses. As Partnership coordinator I plan to focus on technology companies that can help reduce the cost of our operations. For example, by having companies like Google Domains and SquareSpace provide their services for free in exchange for ad space. I also plan to work with larger international companies that have deeper pockets and more of an ability to help with the event. That tied with local support being worked on by my team members should in theory offer the best results for our event.
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Berklee Docuseries
Kristen Higuera
2016As humans we have an inclination to tell stories. Music has always resonated with me in terms of memories thus giving me a heavy interest in the sensory effect music has on human beings when paired with visual media. For my culminating experience (CE), I created and produced a Berklee College of Music- Valencia documentary style web series that features, a Cosmic Clown and his bike, a conversation with a folk making businessman, the making of a South African hit, a night at Berklee venue and a meeting with Disrupción Records. This documentary will feature music specifically supervised and placed by me to showcase my music supervision.
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STAGGER MUSIC
Iltaek Hong
2016STAGGER is my stage name and I’m a rapper, lyricist and producer myself. My goal of this project is a making a firm career for myself as an artist. For making more solid career and be a successful artist, whole strategies, music, style, visual and issues should be disruptive and creative.
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Social Capital Entertainment Externship
Caroline Kim
2016My goals as an extern were simple. I wanted to polish all skills I have learned about in our classes, such as Music Marketing and Global Leadership, and put them to use. As someone who is new to the music business world, I wanted to be able to practice fulfilling obligations in an entertainment company before my career officially started. At the same time, I wanted to be able to say at the end of the project that I was confident in not only having this great learning experience with a very interesting music project, but the company benefitting from having me as part of the team as well.
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THE CELNATIC EXPERIENCE
Sahana Kumar
2016The project completed for my culminating experience was a compilation in an audio-visual form of pieces of South Indian Classical music, which were composed based on western notes mainly in C major scale. These pieces referred to as nottuswara (notes), have been composed in the early eighteenth century in India by Muthuswami Dikshitar inspired by the Irish bands that used to play European airs at Fort St. George, Madras Presidency of the British East India Company. Nottuswara compositions are short rhyme like songs that are penned in Sanskrit, which is an old Indo-Aryan language and are sung in praise of God. Around forty songs were composed out of which only 36 have been revived and notated. There is an influence of Celtic music in all these compositions.
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Business Development for Soundsgood.co: Entering the United States & Spain
Angelia Lowe
2016This past March, I began working for Soundsgood, a Parisian playlist- curation startup, doing business development for the United States and Spain as part of my Cumulative Experience. My externship with Soundsgood has proven to be such a valuable learning experience for me, and in this paper, I will highlight this experience, my work, and the outcome of my contributions to the Soundsgood team.
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Revolutionizing C-Pop: L.RMJ, the New Franco-Chinese C-Pop Singer
Louis Robert Marcel Jin Chauvin
2016The purpose of this business plan was to assess the Chinese music market’s potential and favorability to new artists, and hence develop a marketing strategy to promote myself as a visionary C-pop artist who ultimately hopes to bridge the gap between C-pop and the international community.
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Cosmic Tones Records
Peter Martinelli-Bunzl
2016As a culminating experience I decided to launch my own independent record label, called Cosmic Tones. The outcome is a business plan, but since I am actually doing it for real, the goal during this semester was also to make it the more concrete possible. Therefore, more than a business plan, this CE presents the tangible outcomes that I have so far. Our mission is to release innovative and underground electronic music through different formats: vinyl, cassette and digital. The goal during this semester was to build the foundation of the label and start putting together all the elements necessary for our first release, which we want it to be a compilation of at least 8 different Montreal artists and that we would release on cassette and in digital format.
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UNDERSTANDING METALHEADS AS NICHE CONSUMERS TO ADVANCE THE MUSIC ECOSYSTEM
Jeremy Ogg
2016This paper explores metal music and related subgenres as niche markets and studies the behaviors and personality traits of metalheads in terms of consumptions and beliefs. The paper uses metalheads as a representation of niche genres of music due to their high fidelity and passion for the specified music. In the course of the paper we highlight different personality traits of metalheads and draw comparisons in the behaviors with that of other niche genres. The paper talks about the importance of niche genres like Metal to stay authentic to itself while also talks about the difference between niche and underground. The methodology used in this paper included first hand data collection to analyse data in the form of: surveys, literature review, focus groups and interviews with record label professionals. Business models and practices of the metal music ecosystem are still largely traditional and needing to adapt to a more versatile means of conducting business. The music industry has revolutionised since the beginning of digitalisation. The introduction of peer to peer applications and streaming has changed the music business. The introduction of technology has shifted the paradigm of businesses, where the incorporation, influence and induction is a necessity in order to be ‘successful’. The need for new, inventive and creative business strategies is at its utmost importance at this moment.
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LiveXmusic Business Plan
Alex Canuto Peiró-Camaró
2016After years of working as an individual concert promoter and booking agent, and attending the Global Entertainment and Music Business Masters Program at Berklee Valencia, it is my duty to create LiveXmusic as company which is ready to fill a gap in the local and national music market. My experience in the local music industry has provided me with management skills and deep knowledge, including contacts, data, partners, employees, etc. Also, having attended the Music Business Program has provided me with very valuable information and the understanding of the music industry in a global scale, something which makes me totally ready to work with professionals both nationally and internationally.
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TEDx Berklee Valencia: Artistic Direction
Emily Prest
2016For my Culminating Experience project, I will be working as the Artistic Coordinator for TEDxBerkleeValencia reporting to Max Wright, the Artistic Director, and working in conjunction with the entire TEDxBV team. The major goal of this event is to bring “Ideas Worth Spreading” to the Berklee students as well as the Valencia Community under the theme “Connecting the Dots”. Therefore, we will be looking to bring in speakers that do just that; connect the dots in their own subject field and with each other.
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Externship with Project Next Up
Faizan Shaikh
2016The objective of my externship was to help ProjectNextUp plan and execute an event called HERoes (HER Original Empowering Stories) in Valencia, Spain. The event took place at the El Auditorio del Cubo Azul in the IDEAS institute (Universitat Politècnica de València) on April 8, 2016. HERoes invited men and women of all ages and backgrounds into the conversation of gender equality, while recreating the narrative of leadership and success, and inspiring action as a united music community. A diverse group of music executives would come together to speak on panels, mentor, and craft their own workshops for students at Berklee Valencia, greater Valencian community, and global music community as a whole.
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TEDxBerkleeValencia
Roochay Shukla
2016The popular global event TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading that has been running successfully for the past 30 years. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. TEDx and Berklee Valencia have joined hands to call this event TEDxBerkleeValencia (TEDxBV), where x = independently organized TED event. I am responsible for the role of Marketing and Communications Coordinator for their third edition, scheduled on 16 April 2016.
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Publishing A Canadian Songwriter: Ryan Stotland The Next Musical Raconteur
Ryan Stotland
2016My project this year was to develop my plan and marketing for my career as a songwriter. I have been publishing songs since 2008 and I took this year to formulate a plan for my publishing catalogue and to develop my self as a singer songwriter. My plan incorporates taking advantage of my back catalogue and looking towards marketing and developing new material. Over the course of the year I worked on recording a new EP , making a website, doing research, developing my social media and generally implementing my plan.
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Music and Coffee: How does background music affect the value of a cup of coffee
Dik Sun Lai
2016Growing up in a hectic and hustling city like Hong Kong, many citizens consume caffeine to energize themselves to deal with the everyday workloads ahead, either from studies or work. This year, when I am studying in Europe, I discover that the culture of drinking coffee is even more prevailing. This huge demand in the coffee market attracts the visions of businessmen, triggering a trend of small coffee shops and cafés opening. However, due to the keen competition from large-scale chain coffee shops such as Starbucks and Pacific Coffee, it is difficult for these small coffee shops to survive and sustain. This phenomenon contributes to my thoughts of possible ways to increase their value. Simultaneously, a literature, which manifests the positive relations between background music and taste of wine triggered my research. In the following research paper, I am going to investigate into the relationships between the value of a cup of coffee and the background music.
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TEDx Berklee Valencia: Connecting the Dots
Rangel Toussaint
2016As one of the two Sponsorship Coordinators, now known as Partnership Coordinators, for the 2016 TEDxBerkleeValencia Team I, along with the rest of the team, will be bringing to fruition the Connecting The Dots TEDx Event on April 16th, 2016. It is common knowledge that connecting the dots is a form of puzzle containing a sequence of numbered dots that when connected in relative order depicts a certain image and that is, in a metaphorical sense, what the 2016 TEDxBerkleeValencia Team has aimed to accomplish come April 16th. We will host speakers, singers, and individuals from multiple disciplines that will come together to invite us into their world. By combining diverse ideas with new and creative ways of thinking and pushing the limits of expectations we will “connect the dots” and share with our audience a more enhanced and profound way to understand the world we live in.
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Externship for Midem Artist Accelerator
Jonathan Watcher
2016I received the opportunity to work as an extern for the Midem Conference. The position was with a particular arm of the conference called the “Midem Artist Accelerator”, which invites 12 bands from around the world to learn from top industry executives as well as perform at the associated Midem festival. Because of its close alignment with my professional goals and interests in the music industry, I accepted the offer to work as an extern. The details of this externship are the topic of this paper, as this job was my Culminating Experience. Below, I will describe the Midem Accelerator, the job position, expectations for this position, as well as the work that I completed.
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Woo Management
Kaylen Woo Poretzky
2016Woo Management is a rebranding and expansion of the existing company Patty Woo Management. Based in Los Angeles, California, Patty Woo Management is currently a sole proprietorship theatrical talent (actors and actresses) management company. This business plan proposes a rebranding initiative that would expand the type of talent represented to also include creatives in the music industry (artists, musicians, composers, producers, etc.) while maintaining a reputation of firm honesty and a dedication to only work with quality talent. Our mission statement is to protect and advise creative clients as to how thrive in the cutthroat entertainment industry.
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How to Build a Market Presence in China?
Jingjing Zhou
2016To launch of a music business that directly introduce foreign independent artists to China's music industry. The business provides consultancy services on market education, direct marketing and fan building, music publishing, licensing and distribution, as well as channels of monetizing music in a different market.
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What Tune Does the Bluebird Sing?
Wesley Trevor A'Harrah
2015What Tune Does the Bluebird Sing is a work of original research. In this study, I collected and examined Twitter usage and Next Big Sound data that covered 3000 professional musicians, representing hundreds of major music acts. The purpose of this study was to identify how music acts of varying genres utilize Twitter in distinct ways, and to differing effects. Finding trends in usage by specific genres, I came to several conclusions based on subjects from audience demographics and segments, technological fluency and workplace culture.
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The Music Industry in China: Analyzing Consumption, Marketing, and Historical Trends
Kyle M. Bagley
2015The project completed for my culminating experience was a research paper covering the music industry in China. My paper is an effort to provide a greater understanding of the country and how music is consumed and marketed. It starts with a literature review, which looks at historical realities in the country, first being the development of piracy in the country. Unlike the US, who views piracy as a digital issue, China has had problems with piracy going back to the 90’s, with illegal CD’s being sold on the black market. The paper also outlines methods of government censorship, in the form of social media control and festival closures. I also analyze how Western countries have influenced the music, through the opening of China’s borders, and through sovereign regions within China including Hong Kong and Taiwan. The second half of my paper outlines social media networks and habits. Platforms are analyzed individually by users, content, and trends to produce best practices and methods for success. Streaming services are also considered to measure current usage and provide an overview of the music technology market. Branding and sponsorships are briefly covered as an important method of raising money and awareness for artists and companies. Lastly, I discuss areas for growth and untapped markets within China, which include crowdfunding, and increasing merchandise and value added sales.