Description: The Art and Business of Music introduces a flexible framework to develop and manage an artistic career in music with a focus on Hawaiian music but open to other styles and collaborations. It facilitates developing an evolving individual artistic vision that supports both cultural integrity and financial opportunity.

Extended Description: This course begins with the challenge of creating a guiding artistic vision that could be individual or group centered, and which serves as inspiration for developing “products” and “experiences” for different audiences, a most important audience being the artist and those working with him/her. A strong vision will allow for evolution over a career and be flexible enough to work with multiple audiences in multiple formats.

The course moves on to understand different strategies for reaching different audiences, as well as different strategies for managing the legal and financial aspects of a performing arts careeer. The course will make strong use of experienced guest artists and service providers including graphic artists, attorneys, booking agents, tour producers, film makers, social media experts, etc. some of which will appear in person and others of which will participate via telecommunications.

How do you make a living in today’s music business? How do you honor your culture and stay in integrity performing a societal role that frequently is not associated with commerce? How do you attract and work with collaborators including other artists, techies, and those with business focuses?

This course brings together the challenge of articulating an evolving artistic vision along with an approach that makes it attractive for others to work with and support you, while also providing ongoing motivation to do the hard work that you will need to do. In addition to helping you create the beginnings of a compelling artistic story, the course will provide guidance in hands-on practical challenges like creating a web site, writing interesting press releases, creating a viral social media presence, and presenting yourself to multiple audiences in diverse formats. The course will also give you a handle on financial concepts like risk and reward, profit and loss, assets and liabilities and how all these work together to create value and returns on investment for you and our community. The course will also give you practical knowledge on intellectual property, negotiation skills, and how to work with investors and the government.

Instructor: Your instructor, David Fisher, is both a business consultant and musician.  He has consulted and taught via the Maui Small Business Development Center at the tech park for 19 years.  His music career has primarily been in the Caribbean and NYC—where he also studied music production and engineering. On Maui he has balanced his day gig with serveral music projects over the years and is currently developing several ideas including a live and virtual showcase.

You may contact David at dbfisher@hawaii.edu for more information