Strategies for Success in your Music Career (Coursera)

Strategies for Success in your Music Career (Coursera)

The Musician's Professional Toolbox is more than just a collection of career-building skills: professional musicians need strategies in place that maximize the impact of those skills. Designed for musicians at any point in their career, this course will provide learners with foundational skills necessary for managing your professional music career, including skill assessment, time management, goal setting and networking. The course can be taken by itself or as the first course in the Musician's Professional Toolbox.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Coursera's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

What You Will Learn

  • Understand your unique mix of musical and non-musical skills and how those skills can inform your career development.
  • Develop better habits: Link task management to near-term, mid-term, and long-term goals.
  • Identify ways to measure outcomes and gauge success.
  • Begin building/expanding a professional network.

Course 1 of 4 in the Musician’s Professional Toolbox: Your Portfolio Career Specialization

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Assessing Your Skills
In this module you will assess your current gifts, skills, passions, and areas for improvement, identify transferable skills, and craft a personal mission statement to guide you for the remainder of this specialization.

WEEK 2
Setting and Evaluating Your Goals
In the module, you will learn how to determine your goals, design objectives to achieve them, and measure your success.

WEEK 3
Managing Your Time
In this module you will learn various methods for prioritizing tasks and managing your time, resulting in a more efficient and productive use of this precious resource.

WEEK 4
Building and Managing Your Network
In this module, you will learn effective networking techniques, how to build and nurture a professional network, and how to organize and measure a professional database.

Go to Class
MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Teaching the Violin and Viola: Creating a Healthy Foundation (Coursera) Coursera
Northwestern University

Teaching the Violin and Viola: Creating a Healthy Foundation (Coursera)

Join us as we explore the fundamental principles and early stages of teaching violin and viola through a series of engaging video lectures and lesson demonstrations, including: 1) Master classes with some of the world’s top string pedagogues, 2) Individual lesson demos of teaching violin/viola set up, left and right hand technique and pieces from the early violin/viola repertoire, 3) Group lesson demos of teaching music theory, ear training and fun activities that encourage good playing habits, and 4) A “field trip” to the violin shop, where we will outfit a new beginning student with a proper instrument and bow.

Oct 26th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Teoria Musical (Coursera) Coursera
Berklee College of Music

Teoria Musical (Coursera)

Explore os elementos básicos que compoem a música, desenvolva sua percepção, tire músicas de ouvido, e aprenda a ler e escrever usando notação musical. Procuramos criar um curso que unisse a cultura e música brasileira com técnicas de aprendizado de solfejo e leitura rítmica. Você fará parte de uma aula de Percepção Musical ("Ear Training") na Berklee College of Music, cantando e praticando com outros alunos e interagindo com os vídeos. Além disso, você terá acesso a material para praticar, como faixas de acompanhamento e partituras.

Nov 2nd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Personal Productivity, Time Management and Prioritization (Coursera) Coursera
Starweaver

Personal Productivity, Time Management and Prioritization (Coursera)

The "Personal Productivity & Time Management" course offers a comprehensive guide to enhance learners' productivity and time management skills. Emphasizing the crucial role of organization, the course covers various aspects, including workspace arrangements, task management, and time prioritization, enabling learners to strike a balance between daily responsibilities and long-term goals.

Nov 2nd 2026
1 Week
History of Rock, Part One (Coursera) Coursera
University of Rochester

History of Rock, Part One (Coursera)

This course, part 1 of a 2-course sequence, examines the history of rock, primarily as it unfolded in the United States, from the days before rock (pre-1955) to the end of the 1960s. This course covers the music of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and many more artists, with an emphasis both on cultural context and on the music itself. We will also explore how developments in the music business and in technology helped shape the ways in which styles developed.

Oct 26th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop (Coursera) Coursera
California Institute of the Arts

Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop (Coursera)

Why just write poems when you can write better ones? This course is built on the notion that the most exciting writing begins after the first draft. It is specifically for folks who believe that writing poems just to express oneself is like using the Internet just for email. After all, poetry can change the way you and your readers think of the world and its inhabitants; it can break new ground for language; turn a blank sheet of paper into a teeming concert of voices and music.

Oct 26th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Jazz Improvisation (Coursera) Coursera
Berklee College of Music

Jazz Improvisation (Coursera)

Learn the basic concepts of improvisation from Gary Burton, one of the most renowned improvisers in the jazz world, including the mental, melodic, and harmonic processes that contribute to the instinctive skills that an improviser puts to use when taking a solo. While many people are fans of jazz and understand that musicians are often “making up” the notes they are playing during a performance, most people—often including musicians, themselves, who are beginning to learn improvising—aren’t clear about what exact processes take place to enable this to happen. The purpose of this course is to introduce the basic concepts of modern improvisation and how to go about mastering the different musical and mental skills involved.

Nov 2nd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems: Part 2 (Coursera) Coursera
University of Maryland, College Park

Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems: Part 2 (Coursera)

This course introduces you to the design and implementation of Android applications for mobile devices. You will build upon concepts from the prior course, including handling notifications, using multimedia and graphics and incorporating touch and gestures into your apps.

Oct 26th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas Part 2 (Coursera) Coursera
Curtis Institute of Music

Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas Part 2 (Coursera)

Welcome to Part 2 of Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas! I'm delighted to launch another set of new lectures of this course as Part 2. As before, this class is meant for people of all levels of experience with Beethoven's music (including no experience at all!). Remember that you are able to watch the lectures as many times as you like, at whatever pace is comfortable for you.

Nov 2nd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Fundamentals of Audio and Music Engineering: Part 1 Musical Sound & Electronics (Coursera) Coursera
University of Rochester

Fundamentals of Audio and Music Engineering: Part 1 Musical Sound & Electronics (Coursera)

In this course students learn the basic concepts of acoustics and electronics and how they can applied to understand musical sound and make music with electronic instruments. Topics include: sound waves, musical sound, basic electronics, and applications of these basic principles in amplifiers and speaker design.

Oct 26th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Creating Sounds for Electronic Music (Coursera) Coursera
Berklee College of Music

Creating Sounds for Electronic Music (Coursera)

What you’ll achieve: In this project-centered course*, you will create sounds and use them in your own musical compositions. Whether you're an aspiring producer, composer, or hobbyist, this course will help you gain skills in music production and confidence using software synthesizers. Along with your classmates, you will create a massive database of designed sounds, or patches, to use in your compositions. As part of the course, you will work with a free version of FXpansion Strobe 2.

Oct 26th 2026
4 Weeks
Digital Footprint (Coursera) Coursera
University of Edinburgh

Digital Footprint (Coursera)

If I Googled you, what would I find? As we move around the online world we leave tracks and traces of our activity all the time: social media accounts, tagged images, professional presences, scraps of text, but also many artefacts we don't always realise we are leaving behind, or that others leave about us. In this course you will hear from a range of experts and you will have an opportunity to explore and reflect on your own online tracks and traces, to understand why your digital footprint is important. We will introduce you to some of the tools and approaches to effectively manage your online presence (or digital footprint).

Nov 2nd 2026
3 Weeks