Music entrepreneurship course strikes a new chord for creative careers

Growing up, Business School lecturer Dr Marissa Kaloga’s dining room was filled with instruments. Someone would start playing, another would pick up a second instrument, and music would gradually fill the house. This led to a lifelong love of music, from playing cello in youth symphony in the 90s, to releasing vinyl and CDs with Detroit shoegaze band, Mahogany, and building a reputation as “New Zealand’s loudest folk band” with Marissa and the Dandelions in the 2020s.

The experience of music as something collaborative and woven into everyday life now informs a new music entrepreneurship course, Music Industry and Business, at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland. The course helps students rethink what a career in music could look like by combining creative practice with entrepreneurial thinking.

For many creative professionals, the traditional pathways into sustainable careers have become increasingly uncertain. Kaloga believes these disruptions make entrepreneurial thinking particularly relevant for creative practitioners. "There's an unprecedented amount of disruption in the creative economy because of digitisation,” she says. “It can be unsettling, but at the same time it opens up an amazing opportunity for people who are willing to take risks.”

The course was launched last year and developed through a collaboration between the faculty of Creative Arts and Industries, and the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), led by Dr Kaloga in her role as Hynds Lecturer of Entrepreneurship.

The Hynds Foundation runs an Entrepreneurial Fellows programme which supports academics to embed innovation and entrepreneurship education across disciplines from engineering, science to global studies and the creative arts. "The type of experimental interdisciplinary curriculum work I’m doing isn’t usually feasible,” says Dr Kaloga. “The Hynds Foundation makes it possible. They are champions not just of entrepreneurship education, but of the arts.”

Rather than importing business frameworks directly into creative subjects, Dr Kaloga’s goal was to design learning experiences that reflect the realities of creative practice. The course was designed to help students recognise the entrepreneurial capabilities they already possess as musicians, including experimentation, resilience, and creative problem-solving. Students explored ideas such as opportunity recognition, value creation and entrepreneurial identity, reflecting on how their artistic values and career ambitions intersect.

In the second half of the semester, they applied these ideas to projects connected to their creative practice. One student organised a multicultural music and dance event entirely through community connections and in-kind contributions, discovering it was possible to deliver a large event without a budget. Another began packaging and selling digital music presets they had created, testing demand for their work online.

Other students experimented with production and promotion. One converted their flat into a small recording space and produced a track for another musician, which led to further paid opportunities. Another explored a merchandising concept using album artwork with QR codes linking directly to music downloads. Students presented their projects during a gallery-style showcase in the Music Library at the end of the semester.

Dr Gregory Camp, Associate Head of Teaching and Learning and Senior Lecturer in Music at the School of Creative Arts, says the course has already made a strong impression “Students in music have benefited greatly from taking the course, and some of their course projects have been implemented inside and outside the school,” he says. “Feedback has been positive from both students and colleagues, who are finding the skills students learn transferable to their own creative practice-based courses.”

For Dr Kaloga, the course reinforced the important role creative disciplines can play in the University’s innovation ecosystem. Artists and musicians bring distinctive ways of thinking that complement technical fields through their ability to experiment, connect ideas and work through uncertainty. Looking ahead, there is interest in expanding the course into a more interdisciplinary offering involving students from areas such as dance, film, and design. This would further strengthen the University’s creative innovation ecosystem.