Music future careers

Goldsmiths’ Department of Music is hugely varied, and former students have equally diverse lives – from classical musicians and Mercury Prize-winning pop stars, to lawyers, academics and administrators.

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What skills will I gain from a Music degree?

You'll develop a wide range of key skills through both the practical and academic content of their degree, including:

  • Communication (including public speaking, developing and presenting an argument, note-taking, report writing)
  • Analytical thinking
  • Awareness of social, political and cultural processes
  • Awareness of social and cultural difference
  • Ability to take creative approaches
  • Attention to detail
  • Teamwork and collaborative practice
  • The ability to undertake detailed research

Graduates also develop specific musical skills including:

  • Performance
  • Composition
  • Use of music technology
  • Knowledge of a range of historical, contemporary, popular and world styles of music, and the debates and practices surrounding them
  • Critical listening and score analysis

Where do music students work?

The choice of areas of work for Music graduates is vast – performing (in orchestras, bands, and as session musicians), composing (for ensembles, film, TV, radio or as songwriters), producing, engineering and teaching. Many also go on to work in supporting roles in arts administration, event organisation, music marketing, management and PR; and with further qualifications can go into music therapy, music law and music librarianship and archiving.

Our students enter the music industry or any field requiring imagination and communication including teaching, sales, management, journalism, publishing, public relations and work in the IT sector.