Friday, December 8, 2023

Q&A: Stan Renard, UTSA Music Marketing

Q&A: Stan Renard, UTSA Music Marketing

Stan Renard shares his expertise about the music industry and music marketing with UTSA students.

(Jan. 29, 2019) – Stan Renard shares his love for music and business with students as an assistant professor of music marketing at UTSA.

Renard is a world-renowned violinist, who began playing the violin as a child in France. He has performed and conducted orchestras around Europe and America. Since 2005, he has been touring with and writing the music for his award-winning Bohemian Quartet.

As the UTSA Music Marketing coordinator, Renard is preparing students for future careers in music, marketing, technology, and entrepreneurship.

He has made his mark by growing two large music events at the university: Music Biz Day and the UTSA Underground Festival. Both events are run by UTSA music marketing students and get the San Antonio community involved.

We recently asked Renard to tell us about his current projects.

Can you tell us about some of your current research?

My work focuses on the music industry and I concentrate my efforts on creating simulations and visualization models that can help us understand the complexities of this business.

About a month ago, I published two key articles. One mapped the music cultural assets of San Antonio into an interactive map and shows where our music economy is growing. The other article pointed out that tech companies are the new music industryUsing social network analysis I was able to assess where tech entrepreneurs can make the biggest impact. 

Currently, I am working with my colleague Richard Gretz in Marketing on a very cool piece of research titled, "Beyond the Grave: Variables Contributing to Music Consumption Increase After an Artist’s Death." More than just observing and documenting the spike in music consumption that follows the death of a famous musician, we wanted to assess the impact of an artist’s death on the sales of living artists’ albums and songs in the same genre as the artist who died as well as the sales of living artists’ albums and songs in a different genre as the artist who died.

We are looking at millions of pieces of data that we were fortunate to acquire thanks to a $25,000 Carolan Research Forum Grant. Initial findings show spillover effects, which means that the living artists in the same and different genres than the artist who passed away ultimately commercially benefit from that artist's demise. 

How has your personal journey influenced your work?

My journey started as a musician. I have been a touring musician since I was 12 years old. In college, I followed two of my passions, music and business, and earned degrees in both fields. Later on, it made sense for me to merge the two and work in the music industry field.

Tell us about the most important thing going on in your field that people aren’t talking about.

Big data is definitely at the forefront of the music industry but is still quite misunderstood.  Some companies work with blockchain technology and automation (AI) to make transactions more transparent, but record companies and collection societies are resisting this change. When have they not? So much data is being collected daily by the music business as a whole, but how to use this information is still largely unknown to most, especially musicians

What advice do you share with students interested in entering your field?

I cater to my students, so the advice I give them might differ quite a bit from one to another, but in general I tell them to be themselves because in essence the industry hires for attitude.

You still have to know what you are talking about in your job and have a diverse skill set, but during interviews it all comes down to character. I also try as much as I can to inspire my students to become entrepreneurs. Those who wish to work for a corporation might have to make a move across the country for their dream job, but I know that many of my students want to stay in Texas and for that, entrepreneurship is key.

Finally, music professionals make a living from multiple revenue streams, so I try to prepare my students to plan for that.

What makes the UTSA Music Department so unique?

I would say that the Department of Music does a phenomenal job with experiential and service learning experiences for our students. I also like to think that the Music Marketing Program is very unique. It is the only program of that name in the country.

We host the largest free music business expo in the country called Music Biz Day. It is coming up on Saturday, April 6, 2019, on our Downtown Campus. Some 2,000 musicians, music professionals, and aspiring music industry folks will congregate there to network and discuss issues that matter to them.

In addition, the UTSA Underground Festival that takes place once a year in our service tunnels on our Main Campus is the only one of its kind. This year, it will happen on Saturday, May 4, 2019, and we will be celebrating its five years in operation. Not quite the 50-year celebration that our University is enjoying this year. Keep an eye out for it.

Kara Soria


Learn more about Stan Renard.

Learn more about the UTSA Music Marketing Program.

Learn more about the UTSA Department of Music.

Celebrate UTSA’s 50th Anniversary and share social media posts about the 50th using the hashtag #UTSA50.

Connect with UTSA online at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn.



UTSA Today is produced by University Communications and Marketing, the official news source of The University of Texas at San Antonio. Send your feedback to news@utsa.edu. Keep up-to-date on UTSA news by visiting UTSA Today. Connect with UTSA online at Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram.


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