The first lesson of the music business, according to Incubus manager Steve Rennie, is that there are no shortcuts, no checklists, and no skipping ahead.

That’s why you can’t skim or skip your way through his online course, “Insider’s Guide to Today’s Music Business.”

Rennie, who goes by Renman, grew up in the music industry the way most veterans did: he learned by doing. Now, he says, most people come to learn about the business through books and courses that don’t deliver the kind of tacit—as opposed to explicit—knowledge one would pick up through the old apprenticeship model. It’s the difference between learning to make bread by reading a recipe and learning it by watching the particular twists and turns a master baker uses to get the right texture.

“If you ask 100 people in the music business how they learned the music business, 99 of them would tell you they learned by doing,” he said.

Rennie himself learned the business under mentors in concert promotion and at the label at Epic Records. He has been managing Incubus for 17 years. In his Renman Live series he interviews various music industry insiders about their experience, opinions and advice. The online course, RenmanU, is a new venture. The course incorporates hundreds of video clips from the interviews Rennie has done with prominent industry veterans.

The course seeks to fill a gap left not filled by current music industry curricula: context. When teaching music business terminology, for example, Rennie puts ideas in context by describing real scenarios of how they play out in practice. “Context is everything,” he said. “In the music business, there is no checklist. What works for me might not work for you, so understanding the big picture of it, understanding the context of it is important.”

Nuance matters in music because each band works differently, and part of the job is figuring out how to make the most of each situation. For example, in an online discussion of the concept of respecting the decision-making process, Rennie presented a scenario of a band passing up a touring opportunity because they could not make up their mind about whether it was a fit for them. A student participating in an online discussion asked Rennie, “If you’re the manager, why don’t you just confirm the dates?” “That comment reminded me that people don’t really understand the rules,” he told me. “The thought is, the manager should just book all of the dates, right? When in fact the manager works for the artist, not the other way around.”

The point is to understand the nuances of navigating the different agendas and anticipating the consequences of various decisions by looking at the issue from the points of view of the various participants. For example, artists often deal with the following problem. In order to accomplish a goal, they need to raise money. And that money, Rennie says, is going to have an opinion about the outcome. At the same time, artists feel that their idea is best. “If you put those principles together, money wants an opinion and the best idea is your idea,” said Rennie, “the question is what are you going to do when a decision comes up and you’ve got somebody else’s money?”

The answer is complicated, and it includes classic negotiation concepts—like focusing on underlying needs rather than wants—and persuasion, where you have to make the case convincingly that your solution or idea is the best one. In a business where the answers aren’t clear-cut and the rules are constantly changing, the best training may be in having the right mindset and creatively using negotiation and persuasion techniques.

What does it take to succeed in the music industry? Based on his 35 years of experience, Rennie bets on captains, people who take full ownership and responsibility for their piece of the puzzle.

According to Rennie, what holds many people back is lack of initiative, a problem that the proliferation of academic music biz programs doesn’t help solve, with their implied promise of access to jobs. “The challenge of this generation is that they’ve been taught that ‘If you do this, you get that.’ Not in the real world.”

Though entrepreneurial spark is notoriously difficult to teach, whether in a classroom or online, Rennie’s arm-around-the-shoulder-let-me-tell-you-how-this-really-works approach is a fresh alternative to the ivory tower. [Forbes]