Online Music Retail Products Class

Welcome to the online Music Retail Products class (MMP280) taught during the summer in the Music Media Production and Industry department at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana by Robert Willey. The class is designed to help you prepare for a career in retail sales, sales representation, or customer and technical support. Students who are enrolled will do their assignments and get their questions answered through Blackboard.

If you're not taking the class you can explore the material in any order. One approach might be to start with the families of products with which you are least familiar. For example, if you're a keyboard player, try starting with stringed instruments or microphones and vocal processors.

The class is built around resources from Sweetwater Sound Inc located in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Sweetwater is one of the most largest online sales companies and is just 70 minutes away from us up Highway 69. Chuck Surack, its founder and CEO, was instrumental in lobbying the state to fund the construction of our music production facilities, and each semester some of our graduates join their sales and support teams. The knowledge gained from this class can help you prepare for their comprehensive exam (for which a 40% is considered a good score), or to work for many of the other companies we study.

Here are some of the materials from the 2018/2019 classes: Syllabus Assignments Module1 Module2 Module3 Module4

Check out the interview page with three interviews with Sweetwater executives and read the paper about the Sweetwater Difference. There is also a page for students about Sweetwater.

What follows is what we used the first time the class was taught in 2016:

Getting Started

• Know how to research and write a case study
• Become aware of the main music retail product companies in your state
• Become familiar with the Sweetwater ProGear catalog

Stringed Instruments & Amps

• Become familiar with the Buying Guides and Glossary on Sweetwater's website.
• Learn about stringed instruments, transducers, tubes vs. solid state, impedance, DI boxes, effects pedals, and signal path

Keyboards

• Become familiar keyboards, synthesizers, MIDI and groove controllers, and keyboard amps.
• Plan the presentations you'd like to attend at Gear Fest
  

Drums & Percussion

• Become familiar with the acoustic and electronic drums, cymbals, and hardware.
• Plan for the vendors you'd like to visit at Gear Fest

Microphones & Preamps

• Become familiar with microphones, vocal processors, and preamps.
• Plan the questions you want to ask at Gear Fest of the manufacturer reps and Sweetwater sales engineers

Studio Gear

• Become familiar with the brands of preamps, dynamics processors, channel strips, EQ, reverb, multi-effects, monitors, heaphones, field and hand held recorders
• Rate yourself on skills and experience relevent to customer service work

Computer Recording and Software

• Become familiar with the brands of computers and operating systems, storage, audio interfaces, control surfaces, plug-ins, and notation software
• Rate yourself on skills and experience relevent to technical support work
• Compare the features of the two DAW software package that you are least familiar with

DJ

• Become familiar with the brands of DJ equipment
• Rate yourself on skills and experience relevent to technical writing

Live Sound

• Become familiar with the brands and functions of live sound systems
• Become aware of the role and responsibilities of sales reps and systems integrators

Accessories

• Reinforce the information you learned so far in the course by reviewing the material and seeking out enrichment material. Add resources that you think would be helpful for other students to our shared supplemental resources list.
• Be familiar with different categories of "accessories".

Bibliography

• Customer Centered Selling, by Robert L. Jolles
• The Music Products Industry: A Textbook for Music Business Students, by Carl Anderson
• To Sell is Human, by Daniel Pink
• Recommended reading

Websites

• Music Industry...in Indiana, by Robert Willey
• This class's Supplemental Resources page. Add links yourself to material you find useful that you think others would like to check out.

Sweetwater Resources

• ProGear guide
• Buying Guides
• Glossary
• Sweetwater Minutes
• Knowledge Base

©2016 Robert Willey