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Music

You audition to get in. After that, most of the hours are you alone in a small room with your instrument.

Written by the Sidequest team. Reviewed 2026-09-05.

Try the career before you pick the major

The studio side is where the steady work is. Spend five minutes doing it before you spend four years next to it.

The song · the plan

Remy's hook, waiting to become a song

  • •one hook, hummed into a voice memo
  • •what it should feel like: not decided yet
  • •every version gets judged against that

before a single version exists

Something that feels like the song. I honestly trust your ears more than mine right now.

Nothing has been made yet. What should Remy's eight seconds feel like when it's a whole song?

Warm and close, like she is singing in the room with youBright and upbeat, like a pop song

Try a day as a music producer

A short, playful taste of the real work.

Try it out
Where it leads

Recording engineer, music teacher and performer are the three that come up most. Full time orchestra playing is the narrowest of them: about ten openings a year across the whole country for most instruments, and a hundred or more players turn up to audition for each one.

The week

Fifteen hours in a room with other people, and about 30 on your own. Most of your own hours are practice: one person, one room, one instrument, most days.

What people earn four years after they finish
WEAKEST PROGRAMS$33,777TYPICAL$43,385TOP PROGRAMS$56,008

Where people end up

Teaching, recording and live sound are where most of the paid work is. The studio side of it, recording and mixing other people’s music, is the one you can hold down with regular hours, and it is the closest thing this degree has to a straight career.

Full time performing is real and it is small. An orchestra opens about ten seats a year across the country for most instruments, and between one and three hundred players show up for each audition.

The degree is not what gets you the studio work. A folder of things you have recorded is, and you can start building that in your first term.

Top ways to become a music producer.

What a week is like

You take four to six classes at once, which comes out to about 15 credit hours a semester. It is that same load every semester for four years: 120 credits, eight semesters, done.

About 15 of those hours are spent sitting in class. The other 30 are work you do on your own, two hours behind every hour you spend in a room. Call it 45 hours a week.

It is spread across seven days rather than stacked into five, so you can keep your evenings or you can keep your weekends, not usually both. What it does not leave is much slack in the weeks when two big things land on the same day.

A waking week is about 112 hours. This is the share of it the degree takes.

  • In class15 hours
  • Work on your own30 hours
  • Yours67 hours

What those 45 hours are spent on.

  • on your ownthe hard part

    One person, one room, one instrument, playing the same few bars until they are right. The performance degree, the one you audition into, can ask for nine hours of this a week behind a single hour of teaching. It is more of your week than anything else here, and the part nobody makes you do.

  • with other people

    One hour a week, just you and a teacher who plays your instrument for a living, taking apart what you brought them. It is the shortest thing on this list and every practice hour is preparing for it.

  • with other people

    Orchestra, choir, band or a smaller group, working toward a concert on a date somebody else picked. You get in by audition and you keep the seat by keeping up.

  • with other people

    Theory is the grammar of music: how chords are built, why one note pulls toward the next, written on paper and named by ear. History is the same questions asked across four hundred years of it.

  • on your own

    Writing out harmony exercises, and being drilled until you can name a chord from hearing it once. It is the closest thing here to a maths problem set and it is marked the same way, right or wrong.

  • on your own

    The classes every student at the school takes, whatever they study. In your first two years these are close to half of everything you sit.

  • Playing your instrument27%
  • Music theory and history27%
  • Everything else you still have to take46%
  • Classes you pick yourself0%

Just over a quarter of your first year is you playing, and another quarter is theory and history. The rest is the general classes, and there is nothing here for you to choose yet.

How much do you make?

Music is the lowest paid degree on this site and it carries the most debt of any of them. The average music graduate earns $42,892 four years out and still owes $25,000.

  1. Right out of college

    $42,892

    Four years after finishing, the average music graduate earns $42,892, and that is only the ones in work and not back in school.

  2. Midway through

    $75,000

    Between 35 and 45, the average performing arts graduate earns $75,000.

  3. At the height of it

    $132,940

    The best paid tenth of people doing sound engineering work earn $132,940.

Where you study moves this about as much as it moves a business degree. The weakest music programs land graduates at $33,777 and the strongest at $56,008.

The art degrees are not one thing. Design and applied arts, which covers graphic design, product design and illustration, pays $8,598 a year more than music does, and more people finish it.

What each art degree pays four years after finishing.

  • Design and applied arts$51,490
  • Arts and entertainment management$48,240
  • Film, video and photography$43,765
  • Music$42,892
  • Dance$39,980
  • Drama and theatre$39,775

Music sits nearer the bottom of its own family than the middle.

The average money still owed on student loans

$25,000

The standard plan clears it in fifteen years.

Is this you?

You get in by audition and you can be put back out the same way. Most schools will not admit you to the professional track without hearing you play first, and once you are in there is a jury: a short performance in front of the faculty, once a year, that decides whether you go on to the next level. At Indiana University a student who fails it and fails the retake is dismissed from the school of music. Most places are gentler than that. Almost all of them have some version of it, and no other major on this site does.

Tap any that sound like you.

This is probably you if

Probably not you if

What people who did it say

  • santoriv

    Hacker News, May 2015

    "In the entire United States, there are a maybe about 10 full time jobs open per year for any given instrument (excepting strings)... If you are even permitted to audition for the orchestra, you will face between 100 and 300 competitors."

  • musicamusica

    College Confidential, July 2011

    "I’ve heard it over and over again. If you can see yourself doing something else besides music…go do something else."

  • BassDad

    College Confidential, July 2008

    "You should be aware, however, that entry-level techie jobs in the entertainment industry tend to offer low pay, odd hours and require lots of overtime for the employee to make ends meet."

  • violadad

    College Confidential, July 2008

    "Only you know if music drives you enough to attempt a career path that is often a meager, hand to mouth existence as the norm."

Questions people ask

Is a music degree worth it?
On money alone, no: $42,892 four years out is the lowest figure on this site, and $25,000 of debt is the highest. What it buys is four years of daily practice with a teacher who plays for a living, and the people you meet doing it.
What can you do with a music degree?
Teaching, recording and live sound take most of the paid work. Recording and mixing other people’s music is the steadiest of the three, and the best paid tenth of people doing it earn $132,940.
How many hours a week is a music degree?
About 45 all in, like any degree. Roughly 15 of yours are practice, on your own. Most schools run two versions of this degree, and the one you have to play your way into asks for far more practice than that.
Do you have to audition to major in music?
For the professional track, yes, at nearly every school. The general arts version of the degree often takes you without one, and at a school that offers both you can end up on the easier path without noticing there was a harder one beside it.
Can you fail out of a music major?
Yes, by playing. Once a year the faculty listen to you for ten or fifteen minutes and decide whether you go on. Schools differ on what happens if you do not: some hold you at your current level, and some remove you from the school of music.

Where these numbers come from

See the other majors