It all started with a road trip. Storm Gloor had built a career as a leading tastemaker within America’s music retail chains (he even lobbied in Congress on the music industry’s behalf). But after a formative experience speaking to a college audience in the early 2000s, he thought, “I would love to be a teacher of this business I’m in.” So, he got an MBA and identified three music business programs with not only a lot of potential—but also the potential for him to make a difference. CU Denver was on that list.
In 2004, he set out from his home of Austin, Texas and steered north to the Mile High City. He walked into a College of Arts & Media (CAM) office with his resume and said, “Hey, I’d like to work here sometime.” The college didn’t have a relevant job posting, but he got to talking with a faculty member about the business. The professor asked Gloor to swing by his class, starting in just a few minutes, to share some of his knowledge. “If you’re hunting for a job,” Gloor recalled, “you don’t say no.”
That was the start of Gloor’s journey at CU Denver. As an associate professor of music and entertainment studies, Gloor has—for nearly two decades—educated, inspired, and connected CU Denver students with music careers. And as the director of CAM’s music business program, he has been a key contributor to its renown as one of Billboard magazine’s top music business programs.
It’s a long way from Gloor’s initial career as the director of music operations for the Hastings entertainment retail chain and as an industry expert on the threat of Napster to the traditional music business. “I found a profession where I could impart knowledge and still follow the business, but now I’m actually helping somebody,” he said. “Instead of trying to sell more stuff and be part of the machine, I can go to bed at night now, knowing that the machine might be better as a result of what I did today.”
Gloor still keeps up with the musical zeitgeist, periodically attending the Grammys and reading Billboard weekly (as he has almost every week for 45 years), all while juggling teaching and other obligations. This equips him to teach courses like one this semester, The Business of Taylor Swift, in which he riffs on topics ranging from his favorite Swift song (“Look What You Made Me Do”) to how Swift’s approach on issues such as copyright, genre transitions, and fan-base-building have helped fuel her success.
As Gloor has enriched the career prospects of students, he also has added value for his faculty peers. For more than a decade, he has been a faculty fellow at the Center for Faculty Development & Advancement, which means he mentors and provides pedagogical feedback for faculty and is part of a cohort that offers seminars on targeted topics, such as applying for tenure. “When I was in retail, the Dale Carnegie company asked me to train to be a trainer—they had me teach a sales course, not realizing I’ve never sold anything in my life,” he said. “So, I figured if you give me a topic, I can teach it. Our students’ success is the biggest reward that we as teachers get.”
For this reason, he brings a “showtime” attitude to his classes. “If someone were to come to me and say, ‘How do I be a good teacher?’ I would tell them, ‘Be a rock star,’” Gloor explained. “We get up in front of students who come for a show. They have, say, an hour and 15 minutes with us. You have to open strong. You have to be entertaining. And you have to know that about five minutes into it, you’re going to lose them if you don’t manage your set list.”
One of Gloor’s greatest hits is to build rapport through spontaneous open dialogue with his students. In his Current Issues in the Music Business class, he leans heavily on ad hoc discussions supplemented by embedded curricular topics such as diversity in the industry, what it takes to be a musician, and legal battles related to ticket-selling and corporate power. “My goal was to leave it as a freeform class where students come to class each week with articles they’re finding in the news, and we’d explore the topic from a critical standpoint,” he said.
During Gloor’s time at CU Denver, he has seen numerous alumni achieve national prominence in the music industry. “I always consider Denver’s Underground Music Showcase each July to be a sort of homecoming,” he said. “I walk down the street, and there’s one of our former students on stage. I go to a bar, there’s one of our former students running sound or booking, then I see an artist and one of our students is managing them.”
He’s also very involved in Denver’s music scene. Shortly after moving here in 2006, he began to serve in an advisory capacity for the City of Denver and has been a leader in the Music Cities initiative, a civic endeavor through which governments, academics, and music industry stakeholders connect to improve city life through music, related industries, and placemaking. “By investing in the arts—and in this case, music—you not only bring employment to the community, but you make it a more attractive place to move to,” he said.
Gloor’s civic engagement extends far beyond education and the arts. He has chaired committees for Denver’s YMCA organization and is mayor pro tem of Glendale. All examples why it is not surprising that as a teenager growing up in Arkansas, Gloor would tell people he wanted someday to be the mayor of Hot Springs, where his dad was an alderman and justice of the peace. “I’ve always had public service on my mind,” he said. “This is just another incarnation.”