Music Management Degree Helps College Students Start Production Company
Austin Community College is popular with students who are musicians for several reasons, and one of them is a very helpful reason. At ACC, students can obtain an Associates degree in Commercial Music Management, and even before students finish the program, they can benefit from it greatly.
Case in point, Jeff Klist attents the Northridge Campus of Austin Community College, and is working with a few friends right now to create a music production company. "Soundbwoy Funeral Productions." What sets them apart from most such companies is that Jeff and crew are learning in college what many musicians and producers have to learn over time, along the way.
The company is intended to be artist-friendly, in that it'll have a focus on artistic freedom that most large production companies can't afford to use. This will be open to individual artists and bands that want to avoid the corporate jungle, if at all possible.
Jeff explaines, "I am trying to get this music publishing company going so we can start legitimizing, and I can start nurturing other underground artists who are my friends, because I would rather put something else out that's new and not make money on it than say 'oh we can't sign you to our label because it's not going to make money.' We're trying to be an artistic community to encourage each other, and help us grow."
The five song EP Jeff's promoting now is called "Pushing 60 Hertz," and is a compilation of his keyboard oriented dub step style tracks. 60 Hertz refers to the low end heavy bass sound, on the eqalizer scale. This EP sounds very potentially impressive from the perspective of listeners into hip hop, hard rock, and industrial music, which almost guarantees a larger market for this music. Jeff's music can be described as a blending of hip hop rhythms, industrial keyboards, and dub step styling, made popular in the United Kingdom. That involves big, strong echos, heavy reverb, and more deep bass end in the percussion. His EP involves mostly drum track style hip hop percussion, but Jeff's style will soon incorporate more acoustic sounding drums, and vocals.
The college degree program Jeff and his friends are involved with also keeps them together, focused on their music and business plans, as well as helping to cement their friendships. There are plenty of challenges though, and ACC is helping a great deal.
"The main problem has been getting the contracts with artists and what we're actually going to do, we need to get a market plan and promotional incentives, and a lot of this is a little over my head right now, but ACC is helping me a lot. That's why I did this degree program." Jeff said.
Soundbwoy Funderal Productions plan to showcase an artist sampler CD at the next South By Southwest and Austin City Limits weekends. So far they have a few artists ready to record that. With their driving determination and business education and assistance from ACC, combined with Jeff's musical talent and their friendships with other great musicians, this production company seems to have a bright future.
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