MTSU Teams With Mark Montgomery For New Course

Music and tech entrepreneur Mark Montgomery has created a course called “The New Music Business” for Middle Tennessee State University’s Department of Recording Industry. Montgomery will teach the course, which will explore the relationship between music and technology.
In 1999, Montgomery co-founded the firm echomusic, which he sold to IAC in 2007. After exiting in 2009, he worked as the Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Claritas Capital. Besides helping to launch the Nashville Entrepreneur Center and the Music City Music Council, Montgomery is currently working on projects for Google and YouTube. He is also the CEO of Kenny Chesney’s spirits company, Fishbowl Spirits. Montgomery recently founded FLO {thinkery}, a think tank and investment firm.
The idea for the new course was created during the most recent Leadership Nashville program. Montgomery and Beverly Keel, chair of MTSU’s Recording Industry program, are both graduates of Leadership Nashville’s Class of 2013. Montgomery and Keel are also both graduates of Leadership Music’s Class of 2001 and 2006, respectively.
“Mark is a big-picture visionary, a business rebel and a straight shooter who is known from Music Row to Silicon Valley and beyond,” says Keel. “I know this will be a class that our students will never forget. ”