Sophomore Nathan Steinmeyer came to Hillsdale hoping to major in music, but once he realized there were no business classes in the music department, he dropped the major to study math instead. He didn’t give up his interest in music business, however.
Now, Steinmeyer has founded the Music Entrepreneurship Club, along with other students, to educate students about how music can be combined with business. The club will host a guest speaker each month to discuss various aspects of music business, and the end of the semester will culminate in a project such as putting on a show or producing a CD.
“In the very long term, I would like to convince the music department here to start offering classes in stuff like music business or sound production to broaden their horizons,” Steinmeyer said. “To look at music not just as an art, but as a business and an industry.”
Steinmeyer believes there’s much student interest in music business.
“I probably would have stayed as a music major if there were more classes that were available to work toward my degree,” Steinmeyer said. He doesn’t anticipate reaching this goal until after he has graduated, however, and is therefore focusing the club on strengthening interest and understanding.
The first meeting on Friday included 12 interested members as well as sophomore Vice President Joshua Liebhauser, sophomore Treasurer Brendan Noble, and sophomore Secretary Giannina Imperial. Amid jokes and introductions, the board members described the purpose of the club.
“The main mission is to educate about the various sides of the music industry,” Imperial said. “We would like to get more up-and-coming artists who need exposure in the music businesses to come here — for people here to be able to help with the organization of events.” Speaking from her experience in the music business, she said she believes such involvement teaches responsibility, leadership, and people skills.
Steinmeyer introduced the club idea to the other board members in March. As a result of previous experience, they began as an unofficial club connected to an outside industry Steinmeyer had worked with.
Steinmeyer and Liebhauser brought in the bands Sweet Ascent and Scarlet White for a concert on campus and were thrilled with its success. Now as an official campus club, they have more resources available for expansion. This semester’s project may include working with Equip and SOMA to put on a Christian music concert featuring Matt Baird. The club may also try to bring in other genres of music if requested.
“We’ll pretty much try to work with whatever the club and the campus want to hear,” Leibhauser said. “I was pretty involved in a lot of different things in Fort Wayne, and Nathan has a lot of connections with bands. The music industry is very much based on word-of-mouth contact or friend-of-a-friend, so these connections extend to the artists they know.”
The club may also attempt to focus on songwriting, specifically in small groups.
“I have a decent amount of experience with songwriting, but there aren’t a lot of organizations here that do that,” Imperial said. “I want to see if I can get that going, bouncing ideas off each other. As artists come in to perform, we could bounce them off them and maybe even self-produce an album.”
