BA (Hons) Popular and Commercial Music

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UCAS Code

A8C2
Start Date

September
Location

Cardiff
Campus Code

B

Fees

Home students

£9,535*
Full-time fees are per year. Part-time fees are per 20 credits.

Overview
Module Overview
Course Highlights
Entry Requirements
Fees and Funding
How to Apply

The ideal course for anyone passionate about music of all genres or looking to explore their musical talent further.

Career paths

Music, Media and Entertainment industry
Performance and composition
Music promotion
Multimedia production
Music performer
Songwriter
Music promoter

In collaboration with

NatWest*
Orchard Live

Skills taught

Creative writing
Team building and collaboration
Strong communication
Music production
Event organising

Course Highlights

Be part of Immersed Festival

Take part in this multimedia festival, hosted and organised by students from the university.

Learn from star-studded guest lecturers

Hear from some iconic voices in the music industry such as Gruff Rhys and Greg Haver.

Study in the UK’s first music city

Our Cardiff city campus is in the heart of our musical city with access to creative studios.

Make the most industry connections

Our connections include collaborating with Music Managers Forum, BBC Horizons, Music Declares Emergency, SŴN Festival, Tramshed and more.

Module Overview

The course content is designed to give you the skills and knowledge that a professional musician needs need to thrive in the current music industry. These elements include performance, songwriting and composition, music production and digital fluency, knowledge of music industry practice and aspects of promotion and events management.

Year one
Inside the Music: Theory, Analysis and Songwriting
Getting Plugged In
Music in Culture, Context and Criticism
Live Performance
Studio Practice for Musicians

Year two
The Creative Musician
Music and Sound for Media
Professional Performance
Music Industry Practice

Year three
Major Project
Professional Practitioner
Immersed in the City
Industry Ready

In your first year, you’ll get plugged in to modules that ask you to be innovative with ideas to enhance your creative vision and critical thinking. You’ll explore songwriting and music history.

Inside the Music: Theory, Analysis and Songwriting
Learn about music creation and gain key skills for performing, interpreting and creating original works through collaboration and solo techniques.

Getting Plugged In
This is an immersive module where you’ll work on a live industry brief over 6 weeks. Learn how to plan, prepare and execute an event of your choice.

Music in Culture, Context and Criticism
Explore music within historical and cultural contexts and get a more rounded understanding of the music you love and where it comes from.

Live Performance
Flex your live performance and ensemble playing skills in this practical module. Explore your artistry and develop live performing skills in weekly rehearsals.

Studio Practice for Musicians
Understand the production, recording and mixing techniques used in the production of recorded music. You'll gain skills in the usage of music technology too.

Year two teaches a better understanding of form and content in popular music, songwriting, the business of music, and artist development and imagery. You’ll also gain studio and musicianship skills.

The Creative Musician
Look at studio or desktop production from music software applications and apply them to songwriting, composing, arranging and production. You’ll learn to organise musical ideas.

Music and Sound for Media
Explore music for Film, TV, animation and games as well as non-visual media such as radio and podcasting. This module is ideal for anyone looking to explore their love for media.

Professional Performance
Embrace this practical performance module that invites you to plan and execute live performances and ensemble playing in both solo and collaborative acts.

Music Industry Practice
Discover what it takes to run a music business with realistic concepts of the financial rewards as well as the minefield of contract and intellectual property rights laws.

In your final year, you’ll work on live briefs linked to music industry practices, understand what it takes to be a professional musician and take part in organising and running the Immersed Festival.

Major Project
This is your chance to explore in depth one of your favourite aspects of the course so far, such as songwriting, performance, production and creating a portfolio.

Professional Practitioner
Manage a digital record label to get expertise in digital distribution. Use critical listening, advanced production techniques and engage with professional music mastering.

Immersed in the City
This is ideal for budding festival organisers as you’ll get to plan and execute a professional music festival, Immersed Festival, right in the heart of Cardiff.

Industry Ready
This is your chance to start planning your career after graduating and develop a portfolio that will help you stand out from the crowd; in any industry you want.

Learning and Teaching

How you’ll learn

Taught in various ways, our music degree includes practical studio workshops, tutorials, seminars and lectures. In the first two years, you’ll develop your practical music skills, building up to live performances each year. In your final year, you can specialise in a creative or industry-focused major project and a dissertation on an area that interests you. As you'll regularly perform to teachers and peers, we've made the assessments largely practical too. As well as the coursework and presentations you'll be asked to submit, staff will also assess live performance gigs and portfolios with audio, video and web-based work.

Teaching staff

You’ll be taught by industry experts, musicians, performers and music buffs as well as professionals from the world of entertainment. Our staff regularly invite speakers from a wide range of disciplines in the creative industries covering music production, industry and entrepreneurship as well as speakers from television, film and media.

You’ll be encouraged to attend cross-faculty events where speakers from other specialist areas share their expertise. This will help you build a network of connections within the creative industry that will prove invaluable to you and your future career.

Placements and work experience

As a practical course, you’ll be encouraged to secure placements that interest you, whether that’s running an indie night at the union or recording podcasts in the campus studio.

There are also regular visits from industry professionals like:

Greg Haver, producer of Manic Street Preachers,
Amy Wadge, Ed Sheeran’s co-writer,
Gruff Rhys, lead singer of Super Furry Animals,
Steve Sidelnyk, drummer for Madonna.

There’s also a chance to win The Orchard Live Graduate Prize, an award that recognises music and sound graduates from Immersed Festival. The winner secures an internship with an internationally recognised company.

Facilities

Positioned in the heart of Cardiff, you’ll have direct access to the latest in technology for recording, producing and creating music on our creative campus. From technical demonstrations in our learning labs to exploring software such as Logic Pro, Pro Tools, Ableton Live and Reason, you’ll have access to the best in industry technology for your creative endeavours. You’ll also have access to our on campus recording studios and rehearsal spaces and get connected to The Zen Bar, our Student Union, where you can get creative and organise your own gigs and events.

Equipment

At our Cardiff Campus we have a vast range of equipment that you will be trained to use as part of your course. To help support your studies we have a Media Loans facility that allows you to hire the equipment, at no cost, for you to then use for your assignments and practical work. We have both basic and high-end film and photography cameras, portable lighting and sound equipment as well as a range of professional studio recording microphones, instruments and associated equipment to use in our music studios or on location. The team of technical officers and instructors are also available to help you with any queries and technical issues.

Why USW?

Why USW?

Top in Wales

Music at USW is top in Wales for Teaching Quality (The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2025).

Careers and Employability

Graduate careers

By the time you graduate from the popular and commercial music degree, you’ll have the skills to go into a range of careers in the music, media and entertainment industries. Whether you want to pursue performance, composition, or administration or want to explore the promotion, multi-media production, and studio work side. Our graduates have gone into the music industry as performers, composers, writers, promoters and administrators, teachers and musicians in the community. Some have also gone into the new media side and work in the computer games industry, creating and producing music.

Possible career paths

With the incredible talent that’s come up through our course, there have been some brilliant careers started from our course such as singer-songwriter Foxxglove who was selected for funding from BBC Horizons Launchpad and joined the lineup for Focus Wales in 2021. Previous students have also gone on to freelance with Orchard Live, Wales’s largest independent live music promoter and others such as The Utilita Arena Cardiff. Each year, our music and sound students produce an album called "Create" to showcase a selection of their work. The project has gained the attention of industry professionals such as Adam Walton, Huw Stephens and Bethan Elfyn.

Careers support

You’ll also have access to advice from our careers and employability service throughout your studies and when you graduate. This includes one-to-one appointments with faculty-based career advisers either in person or virtually over Skype or email. We also have online resources to help you explore career options and make sure you present well to employers. These include psychometric tests, career assessments, a CV builder, an interview simulator and application help. We also have over 2,000 registered employers targeting business graduates, so we’ll sign you up to receive weekly email alerts for jobs that match your interests too.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS

UCAS Points: 96 (or above)

Typical qualification requirements:

A Level: CCC to include a relevant subject (this is equivalent to 96 UCAS tariff points).
Welsh BACC: Pass the Advanced Welsh Baccalaureate Diploma with Grade C in the Skills Challenge Certificate and CC at A Level with a relevant art and design subject (this is equivalent to 96 UCAS tariff points).
BTEC: BTEC Extended Diploma Merit Merit Merit in a relevant subject (this is equivalent to 96 UCAS tariff points).
Access to HE: Pass the Access to HE Diploma with a minimum of 96 UCAS tariff points

Additional requirements include:

The University normally requires a minimum 5 GCSEs including Mathematics/Numeracy and English at Grade C or Grade 4 or above, or their equivalent, but consideration is given to individual circumstances.
Applicants in the UK: Selection for this course is based on a suitable application. If you do not meet the entry criteria you may also be required to attend an interview to help us assess your suitability for the course.
Applicants outside the UK: Selection for this course is based on a suitable application and submission of a portfolio of your work which the Course Leader confirms is suitable for an offer to be made.

How to apply

International applications welcomed:

We welcome international applications with equivalent qualifications of our entry requirements. For more details related to your country of residence, please view our dedicated country pages.

English language requirements

International applicants will need to have achieved an overall of IELTS 6.0 with a minimum of 5.5 in each component/TOEFL 72 overall and a minimum of 18 in reading, 17 in listening, 20 in speaking and 17 in writing or equivalent.

Equivalents can be located on our English Language pages.

If you have previously studied through the medium of English, IELTS might not be required, please visit our country specific page for further details. If your country is not featured, please contact us.

If you do not meet the English entry criteria, please visit our Pre-Sessional course pages.

Contextual offers

We may make you a lower offer based on a range of factors, including your background (where you live and the school or college that you attended, for example), your experiences and individual circumstances (as a care leaver, for example). This is referred to as a contextual offer, and we receive data from UCAS to support us in making these decisions.

USW prides itself on its student experience and we support our students to achieve their goals and become a successful graduate. This approach helps us to support students who have the potential to succeed and who may have faced barriers that make it more difficult to access university.

Contextual Admissions Policy

Fees and Funding

UK Full-time Fee

£9,535

per year*

Further Information

Studying at university is one of the most significant investments you'll ever make. Whilst you’re studying, you’ll have two main financial obligations – tuition fees and living costs. There’s lots of financial help available from the University of South Wales and external funding sources, that may provide loans (which have to be paid back) and grants, scholarships and bursaries (that don't).

*Full-time fees are per year. Part-time fees are per 20 credits. Once enrolled, the fee is anticipated to remain at the same rate throughout the duration of your study on this course except as described below.

Please be aware that we may increase the maximum fee for home students on full-time undergraduate courses only where the Welsh Government increases the permitted level of inflation of fees. Fees for all students (including part-time, postgraduate and international students) may be amended in accordance with our applicable Fees and Debt Management Policy. We will ensure that students are given clear, intelligible, unambiguous and timely information about our courses and costs in good time, ahead of the next academic year.

Fees and Funding Scholarships and Bursaries Cost of Living Support

Additional costs

As a student of USW, you’ll have access to lots of free resources to support your study and learning, such as textbooks, publications, online journals, laptops, and plenty of remote-access resources. Whilst in most cases these resources are more than sufficient in supporting you with completing your course, additional costs, both obligatory and optional, may be required or requested for the likes of travel, memberships, experience days, stationery, printing, or equipment.

* Obligatory

We suggest students invest in a laptop and smartphone. Laptops can be loaned temporarily from the University if you do not have your own.

Cost: £0 - £1000

Where possible, International Field Trips will be offered to students as an extra-curricular opportunity.

Cost: £500

Students may be expected to travel to Masterclass/ conferences/ events at their own cost. All academic years

Cost: £100

Media Loans

You can hire a range of equipment, for your assignments and practical work, for free from our Media Loans facility.

Media Loans

At USW, we regularly review our courses in response to changing patterns of employment and skills demand to ensure we offer learning designed to reflect today’s student needs and tomorrow’s employer demands.

If during a review process course content is significantly changed, we’ll write to inform you and talk you through the changes for the coming year. But whatever the outcome, we aim to equip our students with the skillset and the mindset to succeed whatever tomorrow may bring. Your future, future-proofed.

I’VE LEARNED A LOT ABOUT DIFFERENT MUSICAL LAW PRACTICES; HOW TO DEVELOP A SUSTAINABLE PORTFOLIO CAREER, AND SO MANY DIFFERENT SKILLSETS RELEVANT TO VARIOUS SECTORS OF THE INDUSTRY

James O’Neil

THE COURSE OFFERS A FANTASTIC MIX OF LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES AND MODULE VARIATION, AND USW’S FACILITIES ARE BRAND NEW AND UP TO INDUSTRY STANDARD.

James O’Neil

How to apply

All applications for full-time undergraduate courses or foundation degrees should be made via UCAS. Take the next step: Apply through UCAS. You can apply to us directly for all part-time undergraduate courses, if you’re seeking advanced entry or you’re an international student. To apply directly, please choose the application form below for your preferred start date and mode of study (full-time or part-time.)

Advanced entry

If you already have a relevant qualification or experience related to the course you're applying for, you may be eligible to start at a later stage of the course. For example, students from partner colleges can ‘top up’ their qualifications to a degree by joining us in Year Two or Year Three of a course. This process is known as ‘advanced entry’, you can apply directly to the University for 'advanced entry' using the application forms provided above.

International admissions

International applicants can apply to us directly. If the University has an in-country team in your region, your application will be assigned to them for assistance.

Life at USW

Halls are a big part of your student experience and there’s accommodation at all three of our locations. If you don’t want to live near the campus, there are great transport links to keep you connected.