Introducing Our MBP Enterprises

Written by Jessica Brown

March 29th, 2024

Music Business Practicum is a hands-on course that takes place over four semesters. There are several enterprises that offer an abundance of practical experiences. These include record labels, artist management companies, the college radio station, a recording studio, music journalism, branding and merchandising company, events production, publicity and promotion, photography and video production, and more. Flashback had the opportunity to talk to each enterprise manager about what their company has to offer.

Townline

Townline is an artist management company out of Durham College that is dedicated to the development of our artists. Townline is responsible for everything from booking shows, marketing, negotiations and finance, and anything else to help ignite our artists’ creative fire. Townline’s goal is to create an environment for our artists to feel comfortable and inspired to share their values, story, and message to the world. Townline is actively meeting with our artists and discussing strategies and action plans for the remainder of the semester. We cannot say names as of right now, but we will be making a big announcement in the coming weeks about the official plans we have in store!

Contact Email: townlineartistmanagement@gmail.com

Instagram Handle: townlineartistmgmt

Free Mind

Free Mind is a student-run record label aimed at working with up-and-coming acts in the Durham Region. We offer access to recording spaces, artist development, marketing and social media assistance and more depending on what each artist requires. We want to elevate our artists' vision and work closely with them to establish their sound and their brand. We seek inspiration from current artists who are succeeding in their genre such as Harry Styles, Taylor Swift & Greta Van Fleet, for example. We’re very excited to be working with local alternative rock band Viviana and hip-hop artist RCN Rambo on their upcoming releases. We can’t say more but stay tuned to Free Mind’s social media for more updates

Contact Email: freemindopsdurham@gmail.com

Instagram Handle: freemindops

High Cut

We are a label in the MBM Program, and we uplift local artists by getting them in the studio, offering them help with their social media, and their marketing. We are more so in charge of getting them recording, but we also help them in every other aspect possible. Our main goal is to uplift them as an artist. We try to keep our label mostly focused on Hip-Hop. As an artist myself and the manager of High Cut, I like to view what we do for the artist by putting myself in their shoes. I have my A&Rs talk to them to really find out who they are and what their goals are for the year (do they want a full album out or just a few singles) and once we have that, we contact production enterprises. One of our artists, Santi, has been working in the studio with his A&R, Alex, nonstop. I am really excited for the release of that because it seems like a really promising project.

Contact Email: highcutrecords@gmail.com

Instagram Handle: highcutrecords

Push Play

We do production and audio engineering, so whenever there is a cowrite or a song that will go on the MBP LP, we get a producer on our team to help with the production. We are kind of the backbone of the song structure of MBP. Push Play has producers for Hip-Hop, rock/metal, indie, afro-beats, and electronic. It’s pretty diverse and we all like to contribute to every project regardless of genre. We have a couple of cowrites assigned now so we have some cool information on the MBP LP. Some of the songs we have been working on are sounding pretty good. If you are interested in working with Push Play provide them with the following information: who the song is for, who the artist is, whether they are in the program or not, their genre, and a demo of previous work is recommended. This will help Push Play get a sense of who they should assign the project to. For mixing and mastering you will be required to send Push Play the BPM of the song as well as a zip file of the stems that is easily accessible. Contact Email: pushplayproductions23@gmail.com

Instagram Handle: pushplay.productions

MBM Vault

We work with Riot Radio to perform a show an hour every week for both semesters. We have two co-hosts that write their scripts every week. My job as Manager is to book our guests and make sure everything is in order, and that we have an array of social media people. We also upload our episodes to Spotify and YouTube as much as we can. I am still working out the details, but we are hoping to interview businesses in the music industry as well. I am currently working on contacting a record store in Toronto. We also now have the ability to have our guests perform live acoustic shows in the new Riot Radio area, so we might have past guests come back to do a live show in the upcoming weeks. If you are interested in being a guest, please email with the information mentioned above. Our show is at 9 am every Tuesday, but if the time does not work let us know right away and we can work on scheduling on off-air interview.

Contact Email: mbmvault@gmail.com

Instagram Handle: mbmvault

Breakthru’ Events

Breakthru’ Events is an event production company for MBP. Not only do we promote all of the artists signed to the labels within MBP, we also present other events outside of the program because we want to bring awareness to Breakthru’ and the MBM program, and we want more people to have events with us outside of the school. We do open mics to get people from the community to perform a few songs and it’s an opportunity to help build someone’s confidence. After establishing the event’s purpose, we go onto finding artists and a venue and making a production schedule and then promoting. We are coming out with a website soon that will be in our bio. We have a lot of great events coming up. Contact Email: breakthru.events@gmail.com

Instagram Handle: breakthruevents

Legacy

We are primarily a graphic design enterprise, but we are trying to branch off into branding and marketing. We want to work with artist development projects, such as coming up with the colour schemes and the overall identity that the artist wants to project. We mostly do logos, posters, and EPKs right now. Every designer is assigned a weekly project, which could be a logo for a band

or a poster. We are working on some logos at the moment that we will hopefully post soon on our Instagram. We are also in the process of making a Music Business Instagram account. That will be more about the program and MBP in general but will be run by Legacy. The goal with creating this account is to publicize what the program is all about and showcase student experiences and achievements If you plan to work with Legacy on a project, send us an email with information on what you need from us. All projects are assigned to the designers on Tuesdays, so if an email is sent after Tuesday, the project will not be assigned until the following Tuesday. It is best to send an email over the weekend, although you will not receive an answer until after the weekend.

Contact Email: brandind.legacy@gmail.com

Instagram Handle: legacy.branding

These are just a handful of all of the wonderful enterprises have to offer, stay tuned to learn more about the other enterprises in MBP.