MEIEA Summit 2025

                  Justin Sinkovich, Moderator
9:00 - AI in Music Business Education: A Case Study
9:30 - The AI Rabbit Hole: Music Industry Implications and Teaching Strategies

AI in Music Business Education: A Case Study
  Monika Julien, Drexel University
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most relevant – and controversial – topics in the music industry today. As the technology becomes increasingly ubiquitous and unavoidable, many students have expressed hesitancy or resistance to embracing AI – particularly within creative fields like music – due to concerns about its potential to diminish the creative process, eliminate jobs, and disrupt established practices. That said, music industry educators are uniquely positioned to introduce students to AI in a way that familiarizes them with the technology in a practical way, addresses current trends, and prepares them for careers in the music business, while also teaching them how to use and approach AI meaningfully and responsibly.
This presentation discusses the integration of AI into a music business course at Drexel University to address AI’s growing presence in the industry. The curriculum was designed to create a space for open-minded exploration of AI’s role in the music industry while examining how the technology can serve as a tool to enhance both creativity and efficiency. The topic was addressed in three parts: 1.) a structured class discussion on students’ perspectives and concerns around AI’s role in the industry, 2.) a guest speaker session focused on the legal considerations of AI in music, and 3.) a group assignment that challenged students to apply ChatGPT to music business scenarios and analyze its effectiveness. By incorporating an accessible and familiar AI tool like ChatGPT, the course demonstrated how this technology can be applied meaningfully in practical music business situations. Students were also provided with foundational knowledge in prompt architecture and criteria to evaluate ChatGPT outputs for quality and accuracy, equipping them to critically assess AI applications.
This presentation will highlight how this curriculum was developed and key takeaways, including its role in shaping an AI policy for syllabi. It offers insight into ways that educators can introduce AI into their teaching and curriculum in a practical, mindful way that encourages students to explore their own perspectives and deepen their understanding of AI’s role in the music business.

The AI Rabbit Hole: Music Industry Implications and Teaching Strategies
  Jerry Brindisi, Columbia College Chicago
The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in the music industry presents both exciting opportunities and significant challenges for educators. As AI becomes increasingly integrated into music creation, marketing, live performance, fan engagement, and distribution, educators must grapple with the implications for teaching and learning. One of the key challenges is developing clear policies on the use of AI by students in the classroom and on assignments—often in the absence of clear institutional guidelines.
This paper will explore how AI is currently being applied across various sectors of the music industry, highlighting its potential to disrupt traditional business models. Specific areas of focus will include content creation, marketing, live performances, fan engagement, and music distribution. Ethical, economic, and copyright considerations surrounding AI in the music industry will also be addressed.
Additionally, the paper will review current AI policies in higher education institutions and offer recommendations for integrating AI into the classroom. Pedagogical approaches, teaching strategies, and assignment examples will be provided to help educators navigate the challenges and opportunities AI presents in music business education.

                  Stan Renard, Moderator
2:00 - Beyond Keywords: AI and the Semantic Understanding of Music Metadata
2:30 - The Metrics of Music: A Field Guide to Music Research

Beyond Keywords: AI and the Semantic Understanding of Music Metadata
Jessica Muñiz-Collado, University of North Texas
The contemporary music industry, characterized by the rapid growth of streaming platforms and a rich television landscape (evidenced by the production of 481 new series in 2023 alone), presents a unique set of challenges for contemporary musicians. In this dynamic environment, the accurate and comprehensive embedding of metadata within musical works has emerged as a critical factor in securing lucrative media placements and achieving broader audience reach. This presentation delves into the significance of music metadata and tagging practices in the digital age, emphasizing the need for musicians to develop a robust understanding of these crucial elements. Effective metadata management facilitates improved self-representation, enhances discoverability, and increases the potential for synchronization licensing opportunities. Furthermore, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into music metadata management offers promising avenues for enhancing accuracy and mitigating inherent human biases often present in traditional tagging methods. Additionally, the intricacies of music metadata and tagging practices, examining how AI-driven techniques can empower musicians to accurately embed metadata, thereby optimizing the visibility of their musical works will also be discussed. The presentation further provides practical recommendations for music educators to integrate music metadata instruction into their curricula, encouraging a proactive approach to embracing the technological advancements transforming the contemporary music landscape and empowering musicians to assume greater control over their careers.

The Metrics of Music: A Field Guide to Music Research
Jeff Green, Stone Door Media Lab
Long gone are the days when a consumer heard a song on the radio, bought the album at a record store and then disappeared from view. Today, let’s say that John is in a cafe having breakfast and hears a song he likes on the speaker system. He thinks, “Shazam says it’s the new Zach Bryan. It’s pretty good; I’ll give it a ‘thumbs up’, add it to a couple of playlists and follow him. I could start a Zach playlist and see what else comes up. Maybe check out his social pages and follow him there, too. Some of his videos are great. I wonder if Zach will be coming to town for a concert.”
In the music business, John’s actions and impulses are all recognized as metrics – behavior in the form of indexes and statistics revealing important stories about how the artist and song are doing.  Today, nearly everything involving how consumers interact with artists and music is trackable, making music research a part of almost every role in the business. Various “dashboards” show which and when songs are being listened to, if they’re heard from start to finish, whether people like them and for how long, if they’re shared, if other media influenced their “consumption” and how “engaged” the consumers are.
Detailing many facets of the music industry and the roles that data plays, The Metrics of Music: A Field Guide To Music Research is a new textbook becoming available for classroom use in 2025. Its purpose is to familiarize college music business students with several forms of media, tools of the trade and myriad ways creatives and industry professionals study artistic performance and audience behavior to advance their priorities.
There are 12 sections: audio and radio; music streaming; social media; copyright and royalties; music licensing and sync; music analytics platforms, plus a separate section on Chartmetric; airplay and music charts; audience research; touring; executive “PROfiles”; and resources and reference materials.
The Metrics of Music, which lives online so that it can be continually updated, explains how music research plays a part in everyday practices, planning and decision making. Featuring colorful photos, graphs, charts and tables, The Metrics of Music currently includes more than 500 pages of content and almost 800 citations and sources.
The importance of using data to follow an artist’s progress at reaching an audience – from music discovery to becoming a follower, fan and ultimately, a super-fan – can’t be overstated. Analytics also offer defensive virtues, becoming valuable for detecting stream fraud, identifying “fake” artists and tracking unauthorized use of AI to appropriate songs, playlists and artistic individuality.
Because music data can even be predictive, understanding what the numbers mean significantly influences whether an artist gets signed to a label deal, receives radio airplay and marketing/promotion support, is chosen by streaming curators and algorithms, is able to tour strategically, generates an active following and ultimately, becomes successful.
The Metrics of Music will be free of charge to professors and students. Instead of paying for access, users will be encouraged to donate any amount to one or more of 20 renowned organizations supporting low-income music students and musicians in need.

                  Jeremy Polley, Moderator
3:15 - Creating a Music Industry Program In the Early Years; An Investigation of the Music Industry Studies Program at Appalachian State University and Its Relationship to the Development of This Degree Option Across the Country
3:45 - Popular Music Career Preparedness: An Analysis of Programs and Approaches

Creating a Music Industry Program In the Early Years; An Investigation of the Music Industry Studies Program at Appalachian State University and Its Relationship to the Development of This Degree Option Across the Country
  Kim L. Wangler, Appalachian State University
  Rebecca Shaw, Appalachian State University
  Veronica A. Wells, Appalachian State University
This paper researches the early adoption of music business (industry) programs and investigate the early creation of a degree at Appalachian State University and how that fit into the development of programs across the country. Research into this specific university, believed to be one of the first in the nation, will be conducted as well as music business degree acceptance in NASM and the College Music Society. A brief history and early participation in MEIEA will also be investigated. The intent of this research is to spur other schools into codifying their own unique chronicles in hopes that it might be the beginnings of a larger project to tell the stories of how this degree program option developed across the nation and in our university settings.

Popular Music Career Preparedness: An Analysis of Programs and Approaches
  Holly Riley, Middle Tennessee State University
This paper explores a diverging set of institutional approaches to college degree programs offering preparation for careers as performers in popular music. Over the past two decades, higher education degree programs in schools or conservatories offering degrees in music performance have been often criticized for their often narrowly focused curriculum centered mainly around traditions of Western Art, or “classical”, music. In these programs, many degree requirements—such as theory, history, ensembles, and individual performance instruction—are largely content-focused within the scope of classical music traditions. Although this type of specialized instruction offers value to students seeking to build careers as classical music performers, a significant downside is the identified lack of comparable training for students pursuing careers in popular or traditional/folk genres.
Some accredited music schools have addressed this issue by offering an expanding set of “non-classical” courses, instructors, and ensembles; this is most realized in jazz departments, but has grown in recent years to a growing number of programs featuring popular and/or traditional performance degree “tracks.” Alternatively, many colleges and universities have begun offering programs in various music or entertainment industry and technology areas that are departmentally housed outside of schools and colleges of music. These programs are often geared towards a more diverse body of students and offer training for a variety of careers within the entertainment industry, including performance; however, few focus exclusively on career training as a popular music performer, and many largely favor technical development and/or industry training over performance.
From an entertainment industry educational standpoint, I discuss examples and trends among these two paths to collegiate training for the aspiring performer within a broad set of popular music genres. How have entertainment industry degree programs emerged as a response to the lack of popular music performance training in “traditional” schools or colleges of music, and how have they diverged from performance studies entirely? What opportunities and requirements are afforded in either setting? These questions and analysis offer insight into the possibilities for ongoing growth and potential collaboration between both types of programs into today’s area of industry studies.