Arts Management at College of Charleston

Due to the College’s recent initiative to expand on the Music Management classes offered in the Arts Management department, I thought it was only fitting to talk about a Charleston native that is the Music Director for Charleston Fashion Week.  Arthur Brouthers has been Charleston Fashion Week’s Music Director for the past four years. With over 15 years of experience in the music industry, Arthur is an accomplished DJ who has mixed and compiled music for Charlotte’s NBA team (the Bobcats), NASCAR and Moto GP. He provides music consulting for various nationwide clients and was a liaison for Red Bull Music Academy for eight years.  Brouthers should be an inspiration to those at the College of Charleston looking to go on to a successful career in music management!

Next Tuesday, March 22 at 7 PM, there will be a meeting of the Charleston Student Advocates for the Arts in room 101 of the Simons Center. We will be discussing our Charleston advocacy day as well as the upcoming  movie night we will host.  This meeting is open to both undergrad and grad students.

ALSO:
Thursday March 24 at 7:30 PM, CSAA will be hosting a movie night.  ”Exit Through the Gift Shop” will be the film shown.

Please come out and show your support for CSAA!

A recent article on NPR brought to my attention a pressing issue the role social networking can play on an organization. Sure there are numerous arguments for why social networking is a good thing, but have there been enough talks about how dangerous it can be? The article I read talks about the musician strike currently taking place with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The musicians are striking because they refuse to accept pay outs of more than 30% demanded by the Orchestra due to financially unstable times.

However this is not the only issue at hand. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra fan page has increasingly become a forum for discussing the strike rather than the events being offered such as the Orchestra’s Tiny Tots concerts. Management is using Facebook to counter attacks posted on musicians personal Facebook pages. According to the article, the Facebook fight could affect what happens once the strike is all over.

The article also mentions the outcry that resulted from a particular post made in January by management. In a fan group page called Save Our Symphony, management questioned how many members of the group actually contributed money to the DSO. As many as 169 people left comments, and they were overwhelmingly negative.

I am shocked, saddened and disgusted by this post. If you’re trying to prove how unprofessional you can be, bravo.

In the time it took to type this posting, a phone call could have been made to a potential donor.

I’ve been on the fence during this whole strike thing, trying to learn the whole story, and this post finally teeters me over to the side of the musicians.

In culmination, the article cites the advice of Christie Nordhelm, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, where she teaches a class about social media. Nordhelm says if there is a lesson to be learned from the DSO Facebook page it’s that social media allows open and public discussion. There are some things, however, that you can’t discuss openly — at least, not constructively. “You cannot negotiate a labor agreement on the social media. It doesn’t work. It’s just a poor execution and a poor use of social media as a tool,” Nordhelm says.

In conclusion, does social media always work for organizations? This article seems to think not, but I’ll let you decide!

Article from the NPR website:

Symphony Discord Plays Out In Facebook Fracas