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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FUNDRAISING FOR NON-PROFIT MUSICAL ORGANISATION IN INDIA – ANAHAD FOUNDATION
Abhinav Agrawal
2016This Culminating Experience deals with successfully raising funds for the Prakriti project and also to create the structural and functional structure for the company. This CE will focus both on corporate and individual funding and shall help to define the possible stakeholders of the company. The CE if successful, will be an inspiration for other musical enterprises in India and will help bring back the musical heritage of India which is fading away due to a changing culture.
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American Country Music and its Exportation to Europe
Luca Balbo
2016My passionate interest in American country music and my will to better export the genre in Europe explain my choice. I’ve been always wondering why the country music superstars making millions of dollars in US seemed to be completely unknown and were reduced to a tiny niche market in the old continent. I really wanted to dig into it. In this paper, I talk about the current economical and cultural impact of the genre within the American and European music market and make a summary of the challenges country music faces in Europe. This project involved the creation different surveys that targeted people from all over Europe and interviews with artists and music industry professionals. The data collected from those surveys and interviews were then compiled and analyzed in order to make assumption regarding what European truly think about country music and which strategies could improve the outreach of the genre.
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Know Your Cut
Alicia Caillier
2016Manifesting in two-parts, my culminating experience involved drafting a business plan for a boutique agency, Know Your Cut, that facilitates partnerships between emerging music artists and independent fashion brands, as well as producing a multi-media music, fashion and technology event in Valencia, Màquinas y Màscaras, that served as a case study for the potential success of these types of collaborations. This reflective paper outlines how my course work the project over the past year, the inspiration and strategic thought behind it, and how it did and did not meet my expectations.
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The potentiality of the Greater Caribbean as a unified Market
Antonio Celia
2016Develop a research paper which will second as a market study on the intrinsic, yet seemingly divergent relationship between the markets Greater Caribbean (Northern Colombia, Cuba, Trinidad, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Coast of Mexico, etc); their difficulties, their similarities and the bigger idea of looking at the Caribbean as one interconnected network and ever-expanding consumer market which boasts perhaps one of the most rich and diverse genre-based regions in the world but that still needs to consolidate in a more formal and transversal way.
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Take me to Neverland
Jingfei Chen
2016My project is called “Take me to Neverland” which I did with Xi Chen together. Basically, “Take me to Neverland” is a live music promoter based in Beijing and Shanghai who will provide high quality, affordable live music entertainment in these two cities. It will bring curated, special live music associated with most fun, artsy and cultural related theme events to bring the whole experience to the next level. Moreover, one thing special about the project is we choose to target the expatriates in China as our primary target audience, which nobody did it before in China. We also aimed to become the first live promoter in China who has a strong branding concept behinds the company itself, not merely promoting various artists without any connection between one and another, or without delivering deeper messages to our consumers which is, we want to share a certain live style of young people, more than just an music experience. We want people are able to “listening to the heart, living in the art.”
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Unicorn Event Series
Xi Chen
2016Based on the research, interview and conversation that I did during the completion of the culminating experience project, I have identified the fact that music market in China becomes one of the most up
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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.
