| Course | BMB 630 The Business of Music Marketing |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 5 |
| Paper type | graduate assignment planning an owned, earned and paid media mix for a music business |
| Length | About 1,040 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Southern New Hampshire University |
| Program | MBA in Music Business |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for BMB 630 Module 5
Fall Season Media Plan
[Student Name]
Southern New Hampshire University
BMB 630: The Business of Music Marketing
Module Five Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.
Fall Season Media Plan
Introduction
The venue's fall season runs from September through December, with forty-one main-room shows and twenty-three side-room shows. The marketing budget for the season is $105,000, about a third of the annual budget. Milestone One found that marketing was spread across nine channels with little measurement, and that the email list, the venue's largest asset, was underused. This plan assigns roles to owned, earned and paid media, reallocates the budget on the evidence available, sets rules for paid support and builds in measurement. It is written for the venue's three-person marketing team and its general manager.
What the Evidence Shows
Ticketing referral codes from fall 2025 credited email with about 29 percent of tracked online sales, the two social networks with 24 percent, search with 6 percent, streaming audio ads with 3 percent and the listings site with 4 percent; the rest came through direct visits to the ticketing site. Email received about $4,000 of the season budget, mainly software, while social received about $41,000 including boosted posts. The codes credit only the last click, which undervalues channels that create awareness, so these figures are a starting point rather than a verdict. Even so, the gap between spending and results was too large to ignore.
Owned Media
Owned media will carry most of the selling. The single weekly newsletter will be replaced by six genre lists, built from the Module Two segmentation, and a members list. Each genre list receives an announcement when a show in its genre goes on sale and a reminder a week before. Members receive presale access two days before the public. A text list of 7,200 opted-in customers will be used sparingly, for last-minute releases and day-of-show offers on side-room shows. The venue's website, its screens between sets and posters in neighborhood businesses complete the owned mix. Owned channels cost little in cash but require staff time, so the team will drop daily posts for every show on both social networks and focus its writing on email.
Earned Media
Earned media will be scheduled show by show. The team will pitch two local outlets and the university's radio station four weeks before each main-room show, offer interviews and ticket giveaways, and supply artists and their agents with ready-made posts and graphics so that the artists' own accounts promote the date. Three independent record shops will host listening events and sell tickets for side-room shows. Stephen and Galak (2012) found that earned media, including press and online community activity, had substantial effects on sales, and that traditional and social earned media reinforced each other.
Paid Media
Paid media will be limited to shows that need it. A rule sets the threshold: any main-room show below 45 percent of capacity three weeks before the date receives a paid social campaign targeted at genre fans in a 90-mile radius and lookalike audiences built from that genre's list; any show below 60 percent one week out receives retargeting of people who visited its page without buying. Search ads will run only on artist names for shows that are not sold out. Streaming audio ads and the listings site are cut. Neither produced more than a few percent of tracked sales, and the streaming audio ads reached listeners across the state rather than within driving distance. If the holdout test shows that paid social adds little beyond what email achieves, the following season will cut it further and move the money to earned media support and the members program.
Season budget by channel, before and after
| Channel | Fall 2025 | Fall 2026 plan | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email and text platforms | $4,000 | $9,000 | Sales to known customers |
| Paid social | $41,000 | $34,000 | Reach new buyers for shows below threshold |
| Search | $9,000 | $8,000 | Capture artist searches |
| Retargeting | $0 | $7,000 | Convert page visitors |
| Streaming audio ads | $12,000 | $0 | Cut |
| Listings site | $6,000 | $0 | Cut |
| Posters and print | $14,000 | $12,000 | Neighborhood awareness |
| Local radio | $11,000 | $6,000 | College and community radio partnerships |
| Earned media support, giveaways, events | $3,000 | $10,000 | Press, record shops, artist assets |
| Measurement and testing | $0 | $4,000 | Tracking setup and holdout test |
| Reserve | $5,000 | $15,000 | Late support for struggling shows |
| Total | $105,000 | $105,000 |
Measurement
Every link in every channel will carry a tracking code, and each paid campaign will use its own discount-free promotion code, so sales can be traced without changing prices. Because platforms report results generously, the venue will run a holdout test on paid social: for six shows, a random 20 percent of the target audience will be excluded from ads, and purchase rates will be compared. Lewis and Rao (2015) show that the effects of advertising are small relative to normal variation in sales, which means only a controlled test can tell whether ads are paying for themselves. Results will be reviewed monthly and the reserve moved accordingly. The holdout test has a cost: the excluded 20 percent may buy fewer tickets for those six shows. That cost is accepted because a season of evidence will guide the next three years of spending.
Scheduling Across the Season
The channels follow a standard rhythm for each main-room show. Members hear first, two days before the public on-sale. The relevant genre list receives the on-sale announcement, with social posts and an artist asset pack sent to the agent the same day. Press pitches go out four weeks before the show. At three weeks, the sales rule decides whether paid social begins. A reminder goes to the genre list one week out, and retargeting and the text list are used only in the final week if needed. Side-room shows follow a shorter version, with record shop events and posters carrying more of the load. The season calendar staggers announcements so that no list receives more than two messages in a week, a limit set after unsubscribes rose sharply in weeks with four or more.
Conclusion
The plan makes owned media, especially segmented email, the main sales channel, schedules earned media with the same care as paid media and uses paid media only for shows that need help. The budget moves about $30,000 from unproven channels to email, retargeting, earned media support, measurement and a reserve. Kotler and Keller (2016) describe integrated communication as coordinating channels around a single message, and this plan does so around each show's audience.
References
Kotler, P., & Keller, K. L. (2016). Marketing management (15th ed.). Pearson.
Lewis, R. A., & Rao, J. M. (2015). The unfavorable economics of measuring the returns to advertising. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(4), 1941-1973. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjv023
Stephen, A. T., & Galak, J. (2012). The effects of traditional and social earned media on sales: A study of a microlending marketplace. Journal of Marketing Research, 49(5), 624-639. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.09.0401
What the BMB 630 Module 5 instructions ask for
The Module Five assignment in BMB 630 asks you to plan how a music business will use different forms of media to reach its audience. You typically classify channels as owned, earned or paid, assign each a role, allocate a budget, schedule activity and explain how results will be measured. Strong submissions start from evidence about which channels drive results, connect each channel to the segments it reaches and treat earned media as something to plan for rather than hope for. Graders also expect realistic measurement, a schedule that shows when each channel acts, tracking that links media to sales, and an awareness that some effects, such as word of mouth, are hard to measure directly.
How this BMB 630 Module 5 media mix assignment example is built
The paper begins with tracking from the previous fall, which credited email with 29 percent of tracked online sales on almost no budget, and social with 24 percent on nearly half of it. It assigns owned media the main sales role: six genre email lists, a members list, a text list of 7,200 for last-minute offers, venue screens and posters. Earned media, through college radio, local press, record shops and artists' own posts, is scheduled show by show. Paid media is limited to shows below a sales threshold three weeks out. A table moves the $105,000 budget, and every link carries a tracking code, with a holdout group to test whether ads add sales.
Where the BMB 630 Module 5 rubric puts the points
The rubric for the media mix assignment usually scores understanding of owned, earned and paid media, use of evidence in allocation, connection to target segments, scheduling, budget, measurement and writing. Top papers explain why each channel suits its role, shift budget based on results, set clear rules for when paid media is used and describe measurement that could actually distinguish effective from ineffective spending. They also acknowledge the limits of tracking. Papers lose credit for allocating budget without evidence, for treating every show identically, for ignoring earned media or for measurement that relies only on platform-reported results.
BMB 630 Module 5 help: the mistakes that cost points
Students often allocate media budgets by habit or by platform popularity. Start from your own data, even rough data, and show what produced sales. Give each channel a role: some build awareness, some convert interest into purchases and some keep existing customers engaged. Set rules for paid spending tied to need, since not every event needs ads, and write those rules down so the team applies them the same way every week. Plan earned media with the same care, with a calendar of press pitches and partner posts. Finally, be realistic about measurement; platforms tend to claim credit generously, so use your own tracking codes and, where possible, a test that compares people who saw ads with people who did not.
Get BMB 630 Module 5 written to your instructions
Send the BMB 630 Module 5 assignment and your season or campaign. You get a media plan across owned, earned and paid channels, a budget moved by evidence, rules for paid support and a way to measure what worked. Two days or so; the first plan is free. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Southern New Hampshire University document.
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BMB 630 Module 5 questions, answered
Where can I find a free BMB 630 Module 5 Media Mix sample?
This page includes a complete BMB 630 Module 5 media plan for a Richmond music venue's fall season.
What are owned, earned and paid media?
Owned media are channels the business controls, such as email and its website; earned media come from others, such as press and word of mouth; paid media are advertising the business buys.
Which media work best for selling concert tickets?
For existing customers, owned channels such as segmented email and text messages usually convert best; paid social and search help reach new buyers for specific shows.
How should a venue decide which shows get paid advertising?
By setting rules tied to sales progress, such as advertising only shows below a sales target a few weeks before the date.
How can a business measure whether ads increase sales?
With tracking codes on links and, more rigorously, by holding out a random group that does not see the ads and comparing its purchases with the group that does.