Careers Brief - Popular Music FdA

Overview

The Foundation degree in Popular Music offers opportunities for progression onto Honours degree courses and direct job entry.

There are a wide range of job roles within the popular music and audio industry. Job titles include: artist performer; composer; producer; arranger; artist manager; studio or tour band manager; Club DJ; radio presenter; A&R Scout; sound engineer; balance engineer; recording engineer and other technical roles; live music manager; agent or PR/promoter; session performer; music events organiser; fixer or promoter; press officer or plugger for TV/radio; publisher; writer; critic and music journalist; teacher; music librarian.

You could be working on recording or post-production work in the commercial music sector; film, radio, TV and broadcast industries; composing or performing music for the web; games design, musical software producers and sample libraries.

The industry is highly competitive and very few work as performing popular musicians full-time in the UK. You could progress between different jobs or hold several roles at the same time.

To succeed in popular music, it is not enough to be talented; you must also be self-disciplined, dedicated and confident and have stamina. You must be able to work successfully within a team, be prepared to work unsocial hours with irregular pay and travel. Basic business and self-marketing skills are a real advantage. You might be employed part-time or in short-term contract work, be freelance self-employed or have a 'portfolio' career with more than one job.

For an overview of the industry sector, go to National Guidance Research Forum for 'LMI Future trends' and 'Sectors covered'.

Go to the website links below to find out more.

To consider a wider choice of careers matched to your interests, use Prospects Planner and other tools listed in the Career Planning section of this Careers Guide.

Further Study

You can apply for a top-up degree. Top-up degrees are designed as a direct progression from Foundation degree to achieve an Honours (or Ordinary) degree, though entry may be selective.

Alternatively, you could transfer onto a related Honours degree. Entry point would depend on your grades, experience and overlap between courses but could be the final year.

Progression may be possible onto the Popular Music Performance or Popular Music Production Top-up degrees at Southampton Solent University. Go to www.solent.ac.uk/courses/ for course information.

Other related one-year Top-ups include:

University of Glamorgan, Cardiff & Pontypridd; University of Kent; Leeds College of Music.

To search degree courses go to www.ucas.com/ (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service for the UK). Use the university/college links for course details.

You will need to use UCAS to apply for courses. Contact the Course Tutor of your chosen course to find out your position, before you make your formal application.

Find out how much this will cost you. Where is the funding coming from? Go to the university/college links for information on costs and finance and to the section Financial support for additional help.

With a good Honours degree (First or 2.1), you may progress onto an appropriate higher level Masters and/or PhD doctorate. This could be to develop your area of study to a more in-depth practical and/or academic level or to gain other specialist training.

For information on postgraduate study and finance, go to the national online directory at www.prospects.ac.uk/study.htm .

Go to the main section Further Study of this Guide for more information and help.