Vienna Music Business Research Days 2016
Vienna Music Business Research Days 2016 ©Doris Piller

The seventh edition of the Vienna Music Business Research Days took place this year from 27 to 29 September. In keeping with the event’s 2016 motto, “Self-Management in the Digital Music Business”, numerous experts from the fields of music, science, and research appeared at the mdw to discuss current challenges and (research) questions in the industry. One emphasis of this year’s conference was the comparatively new theme of career centres at universities of music. A shift in thinking is currently underway at music and arts universities, with recent years having shown that the career environment for students and graduates as well as the music industry’s structures and mechanisms are undergoing constant change.

So the mission of the career centres gradually being set up here and there must be to make students aware of options for later on that lie outside the “classic” choices. Individual abilities and talents—frequently representing a highly diverse range of special areas—need to be identified, and these often automatically suggest other career paths and desires. Among the things to be taught, knowledge of business and financial planning enjoy a priority equal to that of the networking skills that ensure a well-functioning professional circle.

The Vienna Music Business Research Days are an initiative of the Austrian Music Business Research Association (AMBRA). Their primary purpose is to convey researchers’ newest findings about the music industry to a broad audience and to discuss questions relevant to actual practice. Top priorities for each year’s event are interdisciplinarity and methodical diversity, and experts from the fields of production and distribution, music trainers and teaching personnel, and music audience members and consumers were all present once again this year.

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