M.A. in Media & Entertainment Industries

The program

Belmont's Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business launched the Master of Arts in Media & Entertainment Industries in fall 2025. I helped create and launch it, and I'm one of the faculty interviewed in the program video.

The design problem is the one that has shaped basically my whole teaching career: how do you give a working professional a real graduate education without asking them to blow up their life to get it? Quit the job, move to Nashville, come back in two years and hope the industry is still arranged the way you left it. That's the traditional answer, and for most of the people who need this degree it is not an answer at all.

What we landed on is a thirty-credit program delivered primarily online, with two on-campus weekend residencies in Nashville. Students keep their jobs and their commitments and still get the room and the network, which are the two things you genuinely cannot download.

There are two concentrations. Content creation covers data visualization, podcasting and video production, with access to the Adobe Suite and Avid Media Composer. Music business covers artist management, music licensing, contracts and strategic management. Both sit on core coursework in media theory, digital branding, marketing, leadership and media law.

It aims at two groups at once. People upskilling inside a job they already hold, and people arriving from an adjacent field (English, communications, business, the creative arts) who need industry exposure they have no way to get on their own. Those two groups look different on paper and turn out to want the same thing, which is somebody to shorten the distance between what they know and what the work requires.