More Info About Our Holistic Curriculum

The mission of the Business and Technology area is to provide breadth and depth of knowledge in the music industry and business with a focus on areas such as marketing, sales, distribution  

The Business & Technology area curriculum is consists of course work in music industry studies; recording, publishing, music streaming, copyright, licensing, radio, music contracts and live music and; business  focusing on areas such as marketing, branding, entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship finance and technology innovation.

Students acquire skills, strategies and methodologies for advancing their business ventures and career goals

Core courses are complemented by electives that allow students to build on, apply and specialize in their field or fields of interest. Students learn how to monetize their music, skills and ideas; create and market compelling content for different audiences; launch and fund their startups; and communicate their professional value and vision as creative entrepreneurs.

The Clive Davis Institute internship program provides students with the opportunity to gain practical work experience, build their networks and receive on the job training through their internship program. Students test and confirm their career direction and many students receive full-time job offers from their internship employers.

Professional Development is a culminating learning experience for students in their last two semesters in the program. Every student develops their own customized business venture under the guidance of industry mentors which they pitch to a panel of distinguished music industry leaders, at the end. The professional development project offers a chance for every student to publicly convey the creative, technical and business skills that they have acquired while in the program. It also helps students launch themselves into the industry field of choice after graduation and set themselves up for career success.

Technology has had a transformative impact on the way a music is made, shared, consumed and monetized.  The Business and Technology area believes that students must understand and be fluent users of digital tools and platforms  to compete for  positions  across  multiple  industries  This belief and  technology focus infuses all  areas  of the Clive Davis curriculum .

The Business & Technology area, working synergistically with the musicianship and performance, music production, and writing, history, & emergent media areas, equips students with the necessary business acumen to forge their own career paths, lead and effect change, leverage opportunities and realize their career goals.

The overarching objective of the Writing, History, and Emergent Media Studies area is to develop students as successful and creative writers, thinkers and communicators about popular music. We prepare all Recorded Music majors to work in an open-ended variety of styles, genres and approaches--research-enabled reporting and academic writing; reviews and criticism; biography and memoir; liner notes; radio, podcasting and video scripts; blogging/vlogging; tweeting and Instagramming; as well as emerging, increasingly experimental methods. 

Our area goals are multi-faceted, and they include: To introduce students to diverse and creative ways to think, write and communicate about entrepreneurship in recorded music; To introduce students to the history and geography of recorded music, including the history and geography of specific genres and styles of music; and to encourage students to conduct research and make links between them; To introduce students to iconic performers, producers, songwriters, executives, journalists, social and tech entrepreneurs in the popular music field, and their impact on its history and culture; To introduce students to the major conflicts, controversies and debates in popular music; To inform students how to analyze and fairly critique popular music in relation to issues of  identity and to larger social and political contexts; To write about sound in descriptive, evocative, and insightful ways; To improve students' analytical skills through thinking, writing, research and discussion; To introduce students to a variety of high-quality and influential writing on popular music, including works of historical importance; To improve students' creative and technical skills as writers, because being able to think deeply, write clearly and communicate powerfully about music is an essential skill for any music professional; To give students the creative, technical, business and social skills to pursue careers as "journalist and multi-media entrepreneurs," in light of the writers, editors and publishers who made a significant historical impact on the art and business of recorded music; To enrich students’ practical production and business skills through the development of their writing, research and communication skills; To expose students to insightfully consider historical, current, and newly emergent technology and the impact of that technology on the production and reception of recorded music; To teach students effective methods of storytelling in traditional and emergent media and across a variety of outlets and platforms; and To inform students about the core values of music journalism in a changing media landscape and cultural climate.

The mission of the production curriculum at the Clive Davis Institute is to teach technical and aesthetic self-sufficiency in the art and craft of arranging, producing, recording, editing, mixing, and mastering recorded music.

We embrace the fact that the walls of separation traditionally found in music production - separating writer from artist, artist from producer, and producer from engineer and mixer - have all but eroded within the context of pop music production. The curriculum therefore, is designed to teach the music production process in a holistic and pragmatic way. The curriculum focuses on best practices, artistry, listening skills, and musicality, more so than traditional technical theory, and old guard pedagogy. That being said, all students are expected to become proficient users of both digital and more traditional analog recording technologies. Students are trained to be prepared and well at ease in handling the pressures of varied recording studio environments. 

We believe that production sits at the intersection of our industry’s art, commerce and technology.  Therefore, leadership training, the business and logistics of production, emerging technology, and principles of artistic development are taught alongside the more commonly embraced areas of creative methodology, sound creation, and recording principles & techniques. Students are taught to understand the artistic and cultural sensibilities of the world in which they create, to better develop work of lasting cultural and artistic value. In line with the principles of Tisch School of the Arts, our aim is to train artists to be deeply informed critical thinkers.  

The area follows a song first philosophy. The song, and its relation to both the artist and the audience, is the driving force behind not only the curriculum, but the music industry itself. Statements, both musical and social, are made through song. We believe that the song, the statement,  and the artist are to be served by production practices, not hindered by them. The Institute’s stepped approach to teaching technical skills, such as analog and DAW based recording, programming, editing, mixing, mastering, arranging, and orchestration is presented in a way that leads the student to understand that production, and its vast set of underlying, highly detailed skills, is a means to an end. That end is the creation of music and related multimedia content that will highlight the best of the composition, as well as enhance and forward an artists career, and their sphere of cultural and social influence. While affordable and intuitive technology has enabled unprecedented access to the tools of production, meaningful content cannot be purchased; it must be painstakingly developed and realized by highly skilled people, with wide ranging talents.

We believe that artistic self-exploration is a discovery process that relies on the development of  three main components. One’s skill set, a constantly evolving and growing collection of tools and techniques that is within the control of each student-artist to continually expand.  One's Instincts and the ways in which one reacts and responds to each artistic decision they and their collaborators make are carefully refined with exposure to iconic songs, styles and approaches as well as extensive stage, studio and workshop opportunities.  One’s aesthetic filter or their cultural diet is vigilantly curated in order to maintain a sense of artistic and cultural relevance in the shifting landscape of the music industry.

The fundamental goal of the Musicianship and Performance area of the Clive Davis Institute’s core curriculum is first to verse the students in the techniques, theories and processes of constructing, arranging, orchestrating and performing compelling songs and artistic content.  Secondly, it is to give the students context for their own craft by investigating the history and pedagogy of songcraft, stagecraft and the art of performance through self- exploration, and faculty and mentor guided performances. 

Students are encouraged to discover their own sonic identities and to realize a convincing approach to content creation and  performance that reflect their individuality, style and message. Through a process of emulation, exploration, and experimentation students are empowered with a strong sense of artistic vision and the ability to execute their vision.

The key defining attribute of an impactful artist who contributes lasting and meaningful work on a consistent basis is that they have unlimited creative access to all of the possible choices, techniques and relationships that their disciplines provide.  Using a “leave no stone unturned'' approach, we encourage an investigation of each concept in the multitude of ways that exist with the goal of eventually reaching an “automatic” or instinctual relationship to creation (rather than cerebral or cognitive). At the same time, we train our students to be able to emotionally detach from their work and to recognize that creation and analysis are two very different processes.