Bachelor of Music Business

This unit gives you a broad grounding in the music business, examining the history, function, and key activities of its numerous sectors. Importantly, it uses historical analysis as a springboard for forward-looking thinking, preparing you to understand and respond to an industry that continues to evolve. 

In this industry-focused collaborative project, you’ll apply your theoretical and technical knowledge of music publishing in a practical context, working in cross-disciplinary group projects with students from other streams such as Composition. The unit establishes the function and role of music publishing and develops your understanding of the main copyrights within the industry, with your learning supported throughout by lectures, progress milestones, and dedicated mentors. 

Introduction to Higher Education Studies builds the academic skills you’ll draw on across your entire degree. You’ll develop your written and spoken communication at a tertiary level, covering essay technique, referencing, and scholarly research practices, alongside a grounding in academic integrity and self-directed learning. Core classes are complemented by elective modules focused on specific technologies relevant to your field of study.

This unit provides an overview of the legal frameworks and environments that exist within the music business, with a focus on the start-up perspective. Students will investigate common legal issues that arise and evaluate the responses.

This unit establishes a grounding in the principles and practices of marketing and audience development within the music business, examining the industry-specific traits and nuances that call for a specialist approach. You’ll also explore promotion, publicity, and PR as tools for audience development, building a broad understanding of how these functions operate in the modern music industry. 

In this industry-focused collaborative project, you’ll examine the management of artistic talent, investigating the creative mindset and how to nurture, develop, and work effectively with artists through the lens of inclusivity and diversity. Working in cross-disciplinary group projects alongside students from streams such as Composition and Performance, you’ll apply theoretical and technical knowledge in a practical context, with lectures, progress milestones, and mentors supporting your work throughout. 

This unit provides an introduction to media communications and publicity. Students will gain insights into the media landscape, including an understanding of ethical issues in media communications and publicity, with sensitivity to equality, diversity, and inclusivity. They will acquire skills to develop and execute media communications strategies and receive guidance on crisis management in communications.

This unit develops theory and understanding of management and leadership principles within music business organisations. Designed to facilitate the next generation of business leaders, the unit integrates theory with real-world applications, exploring conventional and alternative approaches to the functions of management: planning, corporate governance and leadership.

This unit examines the role of disruption in the arts and entertainment industry, exploring how emerging technologies reshape products, business models, and entire sectors, and what it takes for practitioners and organisations to respond creatively and strategically. You’ll survey significant moments of disruption in the industry’s history while developing practical frameworks for fostering innovation at both a personal and organisational level, including how ideas and trends spread through industries and society. 

This unit develops your understanding of the economic principles at work within the music business, examining the forces operating across different sectors and how they intersect across the industry. Alongside the economic framework, you’ll build financial management literacy through the applied principles of fundamental accounting theory. 

This associate degree capstone unit develops an entrepreneurial mindset suited to a music business defined by innovation and disruption. You’ll build the capacity to validate business concepts, assess revenue model viability, and identify growth opportunities and strategies, grounding core entrepreneurship principles and early-stage business strategy in real-world research and approaches drawn from industry. 

Explore your interests through a choice of electives spanning AIM’s course areas. This unit allows you to tailor your learning, build new skills, and broaden your creative and industry knowledge.

This unit provides an overview of the Australian and international live entertainment landscape and examines the processes and principles of producing live entertainment, encompassing planning, budgeting and booking a tour, working with venues and key personnel, navigating the logistical, legal and financial aspects of setting up concert tours, and understanding touring markets. It also examines the business of marketing and promoting concerts, as well as investigating the concert promotion industry.

In this industry-focused, student-led collaborative project, you’ll examine the evolution of the record label and the expanding scope of responsibilities it carries in the contemporary music business. Working with students from other disciplines, you’ll manage the creation and promotion of a release while researching potential strategic partnerships with external organisations, applying a broad range of theoretical and technical knowledge across the project. 

Grounded in the principles of strategic management and venture planning, this unit develops the critical thinking needed to build and sustain successful enterprises in the Arts and Entertainment industry. Students explore business strategy frameworks with a focus on the global economy, gaining the tools to navigate complex commercial and artistic objectives and plan with confidence in an ever-evolving international marketplace.

Explore your interests through a choice of electives spanning AIM’s course areas. This unit allows you to tailor your learning, build new skills, and broaden your creative and industry knowledge.

Data is a vital asset in the modern music business industry, and business intelligence forms the foundation of this unit, which explores the strategies and technologies used by enterprises when analysing data and information. Students will learn professional skills to manage, analyse, interpret, understand, and extract key knowledge from data.

In this student-led collaborative project, you’ll work within a trans-disciplinary cohort to plan and execute a real-world event, forming project groups and submitting applications as part of a professionally structured process. The unit provides both a theoretical and practical grounding in event management, taking you from an exploration of technical and creative production processes through to the staging and execution of the event itself, with lectures, progress milestones, and mentors supporting you throughout. 

This unit examines Australian cultural policy and government arts funding, situating both within an international context through comparison with alternative models. You’ll explore the role government plays in arts and culture, analyse how and why it fulfils that role, and investigate how diverse government-supported enterprises in the music business emerge as outcomes of cultural policy. 

Explore your interests through a choice of electives spanning AIM’s course areas. This unit allows you to tailor your learning, build new skills, and broaden your creative and industry knowledge.

In this final capstone unit, you’ll apply the theoretical concepts and principles of the music business within a real-world industry placement, gaining practical insight into professional processes across a relevant sector. As an advanced unit, you’ll take on increased responsibility for your own learning and professional practice, and undertake a major research and analysis project alongside your work-integrated learning. Supporting classes run alongside the placement, which must be arranged in liaison with the nominated Placement Officer in accordance with AIM’s Work Integrated Learning Policy and Procedure (2020), with a minimum commitment of one day of placement work per week across the study period. 

This unit gives you the opportunity to propose, research, and present an independent project on a musical or music business topic of your choosing, with presentation formats ranging from a podcast series and extended research essay to a lecture-demonstration, short film, or other approved medium. Weekly group sessions with a faculty member provide space to workshop proposals, drafts, assessment tasks, presentation skills, and advanced research and writing techniques. 

Explore your interests through a choice of electives spanning AIM’s course areas. This unit allows you to tailor your learning, build new skills, and broaden your creative and industry knowledge.

This unit offers an introductory exploration of how the creative mind engages with the commercial realities of the arts and entertainment industries. Whether you’re a creative looking to understand the business landscape or someone from the industry side wanting to engage more meaningfully with music makers, you’ll develop practical strategies for navigating the intersection of creativity and commerce. 

This unit provides a practical introduction to the principles of self-management as they apply to the arts and entertainment industries. You’ll develop the resilience, emotional intelligence, collaborative skills, and problem-solving approaches that underpin a sustainable career, recognising that managing yourself effectively is as important as managing any external project or team. 

Composition Module 1 introduces you to the fundamental strategies of music composition and production at the heart of the Bachelor of Music’s Composition and Music Production program. Through a series of practical exercises, you’lldevelop a creative practice across melody, harmony, rhythm, sequencing, and form, supported by a combination of weekly seminars, tutorials, and self-paced online modules. 

Building on the foundations of Composition Module 1, this unit advances your skills in music composition and production, extending your creative practice across melody, harmony, rhythm, sequencing, and form through a further series of practical exercises. Learning is delivered through a combination of weekly seminars, tutorials, and self-paced online modules. 

The first of two Music Specialisation modules leading into the Creative Technology major study stream, this unit establishes foundational audio techniques alongside core acoustic and sound theory. You’ll develop practical and theoretical understanding across sound equipment, microphone types and placement, basic DAW usage, mixing desk fundamentals, EQ, and key concepts including frequency, amplitude, and acoustics, assessed through both a written examination and a practical skills assessment. 

The second of two Music Specialisation modules leading into the Creative Technology major study stream, this unit introduces you to the core operating principles of digital audio workstations and mixing consoles at a foundational level. You’ll build understanding across DAW navigation, editing techniques for musical and non-musical audio, MIDI editing, signal processors including EQ and compression, virtual instruments, and fundamental mixing, with your knowledge and critical listening assessed across two practical assessments emphasising standard workflow practice. 

In Performance Module 1, you’ll develop your instrumental or vocal skills through weekly private lessons and a Performance Practice class spanning masterclasses, workshops, and seminars, choosing a sub-specialisation in either contemporary or Classical music styles. Alongside the practical work, you’ll examine the cultural contexts of your repertoire and develop an informed approach to performance decisions across relevant styles and genres, building reflective practice as a musician throughout. 

Extending from Performance Module 1, this unit deepens your technical and expressive fluency through continued weekly private lessons and a Performance Practice class comprising masterclasses, workshops, and seminars. You’llcontinue to examine the cultural contexts of your repertoire and refine your understanding of stylistically informed performance decisions, while maintaining the reflective practice you began developing in Module 1. 

In the Acting Module, you’ll develop your skills as an actor through group instruction in masterclasses, workshops, and seminars, exploring the core principles of contemporary acting technique within a socio-cultural context. Reflective practice is woven throughout, with ongoing attention to your development and learning process as an actor. 

*Sydney Campus only.

In Acting 1 and 2, you’ll develop your skills as an actor through masterclasses, workshops, and seminars, exploring the core principles of contemporary acting technique and situating performance within a broader socio-cultural context. As the units progress, you’ll also build the habit of reflective practice, developing your capacity to critically examine your own learning and growth as an actor. 

*Sydney Campus only.

This unit traces the history and repertoire of Western art music from antiquity to the present, examining the socio-political and cultural forces that shaped it alongside the critical and cultural theories driving music scholarship today. Through listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities, you’ll analyse and evaluate music history through multiple critical lenses, developing the capacity for rigorous academic engagement with the repertoire. 

This unit surveys popular music of the 20th and 21st centuries, situating key figures and movements within their social contexts while developing your understanding of the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and textural structures across a range of popular styles. Online learning modules introduce the theoretical systems used to analyse popular music, and the unit extends into developments in popular musicology that bring cultural questions of gender, race, and protest into the analytical frame. 

This unit introduces you to the history, repertoire, and analysis of musical theatre, building your understanding of the genre’s sub-categories and the social, historical, artistic, and political contexts that shaped them. Through sequenced readings, listening assignments, and recorded productions, you’ll develop the analytical grounding needed for a deeper engagement with Music Theatre works. 

This unit traces the development of electronic music across the 20th and 21st centuries, examining the creative works of electronic music artists alongside the materials and processes central to their practice. Through listening, speaking, reading, and writing tasks, supported by online modules, lectures, and tutorials, you’ll develop an appreciation of the diverse range of works produced through electronic means. 

This unit surveys the history and theory of screen music across film and television, from the silent film era to contemporary small-screen practice. Drawing on practical materials including cue sheets, documentary content, and video clips, you’ll develop understanding of technical dimensions such as orchestration, drama, sync, digital audio and video, and mixing, as well as the practical realities of the screen music industry, including developing themes and motifs and working with a director. 

This unit introduces you to the history, repertoire, and analysis of Australian music across a broad range of genres and cultures, including Indigenous music, contemporary art music, folk, popular, and rock idioms. Multiple theoretical lenses structure your engagement with the material, with a particular focus on music since 1960 as a vehicle for social justice and political change. Learning takes place across lectures, tutorials, self-paced online modules, and guest presentations on Indigenous music. 

This unit develops your capacity to engage critically with game music, examining it from a range of design perspectives through audio and video examples and comparative analysis of key works. You’ll also explore industry-standard middleware and authoring software, building an appreciation for the structural and textural possibilities of game music implementation. 

This unit explores improvisatory practice across a wide range of musical traditions, spanning Western Art music from the Renaissance through to contemporary works, Indian classical music, jazz, Afro-Cuban, and other popular styles. You’lldevelop your understanding of improvisation through fundamental rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic concepts, supported by online modules examining the theoretical systems used to analyse improvised music, alongside developments in popular musicology that address cultural questions of gender, race, and protest. 

This unit traces jazz performance and composition from 1900 to the present, examining pivotal figures, repertoire, and creative practices within their historical and sociological contexts. You’ll develop skills in harmonic analysis, compositional technique, and arranging across jazz styles, with dedicated attention to Australian jazz artists and composers and their relationship to the wider jazz tradition. 

This unit introduces you to the theoretical foundations of music pedagogy and their application in practice, developing practical strategies for teaching across a variety of settings. 

This unit examines the impact of globalisation on music, exploring how musical ideas and influences travel across cultures and countries while interrogating the role of Western hegemony in the globalised present. Through lectures, discussion, listening, and assessment tasks, you’ll engage with theories of cultural identity and survival, consider the conflicts globalisation has produced, and develop your ability to analyse and interpret musical elements across a diverse range of repertoires, including music’s function as an intercultural communicative tool. 

This unit gives you the opportunity to propose, research, and present an independent project on a musical or music business topic of your choosing, with presentation formats ranging from a podcast series and extended research essay to a lecture-demonstration, short film, or other approved medium. Weekly group sessions with a faculty member provide space to workshop proposals, drafts, assessment tasks, presentation skills, and advanced research and writing techniques.