The 2025 Guide to Deciding Your Career in the Music Industry
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While most people outside of the business view music industry careers quite narrowly, once you get interested in the music industry as a place you’d like to work, you start to realize that the options for potential careers can be extremely overwhelming. If you’re in college, maybe you picked your major with the industry in mind, or maybe you’re looking to change your major to better tailor yourself to what you’d like to do in the industry. Whatever camp you fall into, I’m going to tell you what I can about these careers so that you can tailor your education and experience to get you the job of your dreams.
First, some ground rules
Because the music industry is so broad, there’s a split I have to make right now, before I get into any careers. The career paths are:
Live Music
Music Making
Corporate
Education
The Artist Team
The key reason these all lie at the top, above all other potential routes for your career, is that it is extremely difficult for the skills in these paths to be transferable to other paths.
For example, if you’re a full-time singer-songwriter, you perform more and more shows and write more and more songs the longer you do it. Doing this makes your shows and your songs better, and it also establishes work history and credibility as an artist. This matters not only to other singer-songwriter peers who you might hope to gain respect from, but also to venues you might be trying to book for your next gig.
If you’re a corporate marketing specialist for a Big 3 label (Universal, Warner, Sony), you develop promotional campaigns for your artists. As you get more comfortable with artist audiences, you learn what makes a good campaign for that artist and their demographic. This matters to your label because they want to see results from your work, and it matters to you because it can mean good performance for artists you want to support or better employment prospects in the future, whether that be a promotion in the same company or a new job somewhere else.
What’s in common between these two? Not much. These experiences do not “stack” on each other, i.e., if you go to apply for a job to be a trumpet professor at a local college with only experience at a Big 3 label, you probably won’t be an ideal candidate. As a marketer, you will likely not have many transferable skills to be a music professor. The opposite is true, too.
I’ve met so many people while working in corporate music that perform in dive bars with their band on the weekends, or go perform in open mic nights regularly. There is nothing wrong with that. Many, if not most, musicians have day jobs, and that’s great. You can decide to pursue two careers. But what you should not do is expect an effort in one career to result in something better and brighter in the other career. These paths are often very different in what value they provide to your life, so choosing the right one is entirely dependent on what is important to you. Here’s a brief overview:
Live Music: When I talk about live music careers, I am talking about everything except the actual musicians on stage. If you work in live music, you most likely work weird and long hours for not that much pay. That said, live music careers generally don’t require as much education, and aside from being a Music Maker, it’s the most in-the-action you can get in the music industry.
Music Making: This is what most people think of when they think of the music industry. These are artists, songwriters, singers, performers, DJs, producers, musicians, or whatever else you might consider to be contributing to the music itself. As most of you know, this is an extremely underpaid field, but it has the huge benefits of being more in control of your time and doing something far more creative than any other career path in this list. I think most people dream of being here, and they don’t mind the fact that there’s not as much work-life balance because it’s still a “fun” career.
Corporate: This is all of your corporate function people: your HR, accounting, IT, marketing, legal, etc. As you may have guessed, this is by far the most well-paying and most stable career path. That said, aside from Education, it requires the most education, usually at least a bachelor’s degree, depending on what you want to do. For example, I have an accounting bachelor’s degree, but I’ve seen many accountant roles in Big 3 labels require you to be a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), which I am not, hence why I’ve worked roles that are more in a financial analyst direction. Also, while it’s heavily dependent on what area you’re in, there is usually a better work-life balance here than with the industry overall.
Education: This includes music teachers, like the piano or cello teacher you had as a kid, or the music professor you’re being taught by right now if you’re a music student. If you’re just looking to teach music at a K-12 level, you’ll just need a bachelor’s degree and a teaching certification. If you’re looking to teach at a university or college, you’re looking at most likely getting a doctorate. For this reason, I would consider this the most education-heavy career path. That said, the pay isn’t as high as it should be for all that education but it’s relatively stable and can provide a middle ground in terms of fulfillment. For work-life balance, this option is also fairly attractive, but even that depends on your other work engagements.
The Artist Team: This includes everyone that works for the artist. These people are usually contractors/freelancers for the artist, working as managers, booking agents, and publicists. I’m leaving out people like session musicians because I feel that falls more into the Music Makers camp. The Artist Team here does not touch the music itself. People on the artist team are not dissimilar from the artist in that they live and breathe the industry, and people in this camp might have a difficult time separating their work life and their real life.
If you’re looking to narrow down what exactly you want to do in the music industry, I would strongly recommend selecting only one or two of these to work in. It’s easy to get spread thin in this industry, even just with one of these career paths. Especially as you get closer to the music (The Artist Team, Music Making, Live Music), the more that the music industry becomes part of your lifestyle. I spoke an EVP of a major record label about this very topic. She told me that even at a corporate level, the music business can consume and demand more of you. If one of these career paths is not for you, it is important for you to set boundaries for yourself, or even better, go to other career paths in the industry where the environment works best for you.
For example, let’s say that you would like something more stable with more consistent income and you could not entertain doing another year of college after graduating. Then, the corporate life may be good for you. If that stability doesn’t matter to you as much and you value being closer to the music, working as a Music Maker or in Live Music might make more sense for you.
Live Music Careers
Promoter: Promoters coordinate, market, and often produce live concerts. Not to be confused with a booking agent or talent buyer, the promoter is completely independent of both the venue and the artist that they book. I spoke with Ashley Capps, who started AC Entertainment, which co-produces Bonnaroo and Big Ears, about the promotion business. He told me that artist promotion is extremely gritty, and there is equal opportunity for money to be made and money to be lost. Because promoters often produce the events they book, they are at risk of losing money at times. But depending on ticket sales, they can sometimes make great money. That said, it’s not dissimilar to sales in terms of income irregularity, as they often get paid in a mix (percent of revenue share, commission on artist fees, salary, or some of them combined).
Talent Buyer: A talent buyer books artists and events on behalf of the venue. They might get paid a commission, salary, or revenue/profit share similar to a booking agent or promoter. A commission would usually amount to around 5-15% of the artist fee (i.e., you book an artist like 070 Shake whose fee is around $30k, you would probably get around 10%, or $3,000).
Venue Manager: A venue manager… manages the venue. All jokes aside, the venue manager is the most important role at a venue. They deal with broader accounting, compliance, and other management directives within a venue. That said, out of all the live music positions, this one has some higher barriers to entry. You can expect to need a bachelor’s degree and years of experience before you become a venue manager. And even more so than other roles, venue managers are known to be some of the most round-the-clock employees in the industry. They are usually paid a salary with potential bonuses.
Events Coordinator: An events coordinator is usually someone who is not hired by a venue, because they have whole teams to coordinate their events. This person is usually hired by a company as a jack-of-all-trades, handling finances, booking, vendor management, and more. This role has some pros: it’s usually more stable with more consistent income, but it can often fall out of working on just music. For example, an events coordinator could work for a big non-music company and plan everything from retreats to conferences to entertainment for the company. The events coordinator position can sometimes be a good stepping stone for other live music careers, but it usually doesn’t result in consistent involvement in the music industry, unless you’re working for something like a music conference company (i.e., Music Biz Association, NAMM, SXSW, etc.).
Festival Director: The festival director is often an exciting prospect to those wanting to work in the music industry. You get to manage the performances of sometimes over 100 different artists and work on just one or two festivals throughout the year. Additionally, you can expect more steady income as you’ll likely be employed by the LiveNation/Ticketmaster conglomerate, or through one of their subsidiaries like C3 Presents. However, to get to this level, you’ll likely need a bachelor’s degree and at least a few years of experience.
Sound Engineer: The sound engineer is responsible for making the music in a venue sound as good as possible for the audience. Many jobs in this field expect a bachelor’s degree or at least some sort of certificate/associate’s degree, that’s then supplemented by experience. You can be a sound engineer just for a single venue, or if they like working with you and can afford you, an artist might like to hire you to work sound for their entire tour and might even pick you up for recurring work (on the Artist Team). What’s cool about the sound engineer is that it’s a role that can be a bit more transferable to other career paths. Skills as a sound engineer can give you some experience to mix and master on the Artist Team, or allow you to be a freelance producer and Music Maker.
Lighting Designer: The lighting designer is a bit more of a niche role, but if you’ve been to any arena or stadium show lately, you know that lighting designers have a lot of work to do. Lighting in concerts has gotten increasingly insane (but cool) in the past few years and can be one of the standout parts of a great show. Usually lighting designers are contracted out to do tours for musicians, but if you have a dual interest, you can also get into doing theatre lighting design. As an independent contractor, you probably will see some less consistent income. Additionally, this will likely require a bachelor’s degree in something like lighting design, theatre, or electrical engineering.
Stagehand/Tour Crew: Stagehands are responsible for setting the stage with sets, sound equipment, audiovisual equipment like screens. They will usually work in coordination with the sound engineer and lighting designer to set up rigs, microphones, etc. This is one of the live music careers that’s a little easier to do on the side and with not as much education, since it’s more physical labor. If you’re looking to at least get involved a bit to see if you like it, check out your local IATSE chapter. One other segment I’ll include here is that you can be a merchandise seller, which is a little weird to get involved in since it’s again very contract-based. You can sometimes find both stagehand and merch seller positions in Facebook groups, weirdly enough. These don’t pay the best, but the touring part can be really fun for some.
Music Making
Artist: These are usually singers, singer-songwriters, sometimes DJs. Chances are, if you’re passionate about the music business, probably 75% of you would also like to be an artist. As you all know, being an artist usually doesn’t pay the best, but who really does it for the money? You don’t need an education, and it’s likely the most fulfilling option on here for most people.
Producer: A producer is responsible for making music sound how the artist wants. You work for artists usually as a freelancer, and will sometimes perform similar duties as the recording engineer for more logistics and technical tasks. An education can sometimes be helpful as a producer, especially an audio engineering degree, but there have never been more free online resources to learn how to be a producer. It matters much more that you are good at your job and work well with people. You can expect more inconsistent income due to being a freelancer, but as you work on more projects, you can also get credits on more songs, thus increasing potential royalties from having rights in the writer’s share and master/recording.
Songwriter: Being a career songwriter is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated career options in the Music Maker path. While it’s difficult to monetize songwriting, if you’re writing for a bigger artist and contracted with a publishing company, you can often make good money and work with more standard hours. You’ll still technically be a freelancer, but you’ll make money off your writer’s share in songs that you write. If you are contracted with a label, you’ll likely have recurring work.
Session Musician: As a session musician, you can play the instrument(s) you love either just for recordings or live in shows or tours. Sure, there’s more inconsistent income, but this can be a great option as a supplement to another career listed here. Similarly to the stagehands, you can use Facebook groups to find opportunities to drum for a local band when their drummer is out, or do 15 shows in a tour.
Recording Engineer: A recording engineer is responsible for the technical and logistical elements of recording sessions. The engineer is usually hired by the studio on a salary or hourly rate, but can also be a freelancer for individual artists just like session musicians. Relative to the industry, the recording engineer can be a stable and, at times, well-paying job with the right experience.
Corporate
Human Resources: Human resources is split into a few different categories at the corporate level, including payroll, talent acquisition, etc. You can expect a lot of interaction with prospective or current employees in this kind of role. You’ll also likely be expected to hold a bachelor's in HR or Business Administration. If you want to be extra competitive and you’re already in school for HR, you could also look into getting an HR certification like the SHRM-CP.
Finance/Accounting: Now, this is more my wheelhouse. The main roles here are split into accountant, financial analyst, and royalties. For accountant roles, you can sometimes get away without having a CPA, but if you’re willing to do the schooling, it’ll help. For financial analysis roles, there’s less emphasis on having that extra education. You should get familiar with either financial modeling or ERPs like SAP or Oracle. Royalty roles are the most flexible with educational background, usually only requiring a business administration or music business degree, but pay the least out of the three options. In terms of skills, Excel is and will foreseeably be the #1 skill out there. Go out of your way to get Excel certifications through Pearson (likely through your school) or use LinkedIn badges.
Marketing/Promotions: When I ran the Music Industry Club at my alma mater, marketing was the single most popular field to work in. Students are excited about this field, but it can be very competitive. Marketing, specifically, focuses on long-term campaigns for artists that could span months for an album release or years to cultivate an artist’s brand or fanbase. Promotions focuses on more short-term around music releases and events. From an education perspective, a bachelor’s degree in marketing should be all you need. To be competitive, grow your portfolio on smaller projects in college, like helping a friend promote a show or running social accounts. Especially in the music industry, having knowledge of Photoshop or Illustrator can help.
Radio: Radio is obviously dying, but there are still jobs available out there under major labels and some people live for it. If you want to work in this field, you’ll have to be prepared to be a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. Being in radio on the label side means you'll be responsible for getting radios to cover your artists and events, manage budgets for traveling and expenses, and work closely with marketing and promotions to ensure the success of your artists. Education is not as important. Even at the corporate level, you can use your college degree as experience or get experience after high school. You can expect these roles to be more sales-forward at times.
Data Analytics: Data analytics is a quickly-growing field in the music industry at every major label and many music companies. As someone who works in data analytics, you will work with large datasets to create forecasts, identify trends, and visualize key metrics within a company. If you’d like to work in this field, you should major in data analytics, math, or statistics. To be competitive, you should have proven skills in at least one or two of Tableau, Python, SQL, and PowerBI. If you can, have projects to show for these that are music industry related to really stand out.
Information Technology: There are a few different sectors within IT, even just in a label. You can work as an engineer in Networks, Full Stack, Business Intelligence, and more. These roles emphasize experience over education. If you're looking for something a little different, you can also be an internal IT auditor, which requires education at the bachelor’s level (this is what I do now). IT auditing work is less technical than engineering, and you can do it from an accounting background, but you can get a little more competitive by having certifications like CISA or CIA.
Sync: Sync is the part of the label that coordinates with other media companies to license out music for movies, TV, ads, video games, and other media. The education requirements on sync are a little more lax, in the sense that you can just get a general music business degree and be just fine. These roles tend to be a little more sales minded, especially because you may get paid more in bonuses when you license more music out. These positions are very cross-functional — you'll talk to people in many areas of a label, like artist managers, business affairs, and finance.
Business & Legal Affairs: This is generally just a fancy name for legal in the music industry, especially at a label. I’ll say upfront, this is one of the most educationally intensive career paths in the music industry. If you want to eventually work at a manager level in this field, you'll need a bachelor's degree, and either a law degree, years of experience, or both, depending on where you work. This department is responsible for inking artist contracts, including but not limited to record deals, merch agreements, performance agreements, NDAs, vendor agreements, and virtual asset agreements.
Artist Development & Relations: The artist development field is genuinely attractive to many when looking to get into the music industry. Like Radio, someone who works in artist development should be a jack-of-all-trades. An artist developer is responsible for honing an artist's vocal and artistic sounds, persona development, branding, music and video production, playlisting, and much more. You can work for an independent artist development agency (or start one yourself!) or on the corporate side. All three major labels (Universal, Warner, Sony) have internal artist development teams, among other labels.
Software Engineering: While the opportunities for software engineering are growing in the music industry, there are, admittedly, not many of them. Software engineers can work on some fascinating new projects in the music industry, including DAWs, websites and apps, point-of-sale solutions, and machine learning for algorithmic streaming suggestions. As a software engineer, you’ll find better luck at music tech companies rather than record labels, like Spotify, atVenu, and Chartmetric. If you do work at a record label, you’ll likely find better pay and location flexibility than your non-SWE co-workers. Software engineering is unfortunately significantly more saturated than it’s been in over a decade, but I would argue you can be more competitive in the music industry than going to a MAANG company.
Education
K-12 Teacher: This one doesn’t need much explanation because most of you probably had a music teacher when you were in K-12 school. This position will require a music education degree, or potentially just a music degree depending on flexibility of the school. It could also require a teaching certificate. As most of you know, being a teacher does not pay the best, but if you’re in this profession, that is not the #1 thing for you anyway. For K-12, you’ll likely be restricted by being either a band director or a choral director (or theatre, if you’re into that).
Music Professor: Being a music professor at the collegiate level can be better paying and more enjoyable depending on what age or skill level you prefer to teach. That said, most of the time you’ll need a doctorate to pursue this, especially if you plan on this being your career. If you feel like you are losing steam pursuing your bachelor’s now, it will be worthwhile evaluating if this profession is what you actually want, especially for a program that will take you at least 3 years to complete. However, this role can be great if you specialize in a single instrument or voice and you want to continue teaching that to higher-skilled players.
Private Music Teacher: Again, many of you probably play instruments now and maybe even had a private music teacher in your K-12 education. This can be a nice option for you to specialize in a single instrument or voice, and you don’t have to just teach K-12 — you can teach adults too. In general though, you won’t be playing with musicians quite as experienced as the collegiate level. Since most private music teachers are self-employed, your income can become pretty irregular.
The Artist Team
Booking Agent: Booking agents are like a talent buyer but book on the artist's behalf. Booking agents usually make a straight commission off of the artist fee. Like talent buyers or promoters, the income here can be a little irregular. You can either work for an artist directly (usually would be for a bigger artist), or work for a talent agency like United Talent Agency or Creative Artists Agency. The pay is fine, but depending on where you work, the hours can suck, especially if you’re working closer to a show date. Experience here is much more important than education.
Artist Manager: An artist manager is responsible for essentially every element of an artist’s success, except for the actual music. It’s commonly cited in the industry that a manager will allow their artists to “focus on the music.” An artist manager will often manage multiple artists, taking an industry standard of 10-20% of everything the artist makes (music, merch, touring, etc.). As an artist manager, the best way for you to serve artists is by having pre-existing connections, with other artists, agents, and hiring lawyers, accountants, and publicists to serve their artists. More so, an artist manager should have a great deal of knowledge about many areas of the music industry, or at least know who to ask and how to get an answer. If you’re looking to start out as an artist manager, reach out to indie musicians that you like with a good sell. Most people won’t be willing to give up 15% of their earnings if you aren’t bringing enough value. This can be a lucrative career if you manage a small artist that suddenly breaks out. This kind of break is happening at an accelerated rate in this decade. The artist manager can also take on the roles of tour manager and business manager if those haven’t already been hired by the artist.
Tour Manager: A tour manager is responsible for coordinating tour routes, booking venues, booking travel and accommodations, managing budgets, and hiring crews. Tour managers are usually contracted out for tours, and are usually paid a flat rate while on tour, combined with bonuses for the tour’s financial performance. Depending on the tour size, tour managers can sometimes make upwards of $150k a year. A tour manager is also responsible for settling up the merch and ticket earnings. A business degree could do some good here, but experience is more important.
Business Manager: Business managers are responsible for everything financially for the artist. Sometimes, a business manager will be independently hired by an artist, but probably more often, an artist will use a business management firm, like FBMM or NKSFB to manage their books. If you’re looking to work as a business manager or at one of these firms, you should have at least a business bachelor’s, but I believe (from an unbiased perspective) that an accounting or finance degree will serve you even better. When compared to other accounting or finance roles, these usually aren’t paid the best, but if you want to be competitive, just like with corporate accounting or finance roles, get some practice in with Excel.
Publicist: Publicists can either work for a label or independently for the artist, but they are responsible for anything to do with media for the artist. This could be writing press releases for an artist's new single, creating press kits to send to media outlets, setting up appearances for a podcast, or scheduling a call-in on the radio. Publicists are paid a flat fee or sometimes a retainer.
The fitting challenge
There is a real problem here of a job sounding good just by reading the above descriptions, but to be honest, it can be misleading. In order for you to like a career, you have to like the job first. You will not like a job unless you actually enjoy the day-to-day operations of a job. If you want to be in business management or accounting but you hate Excel, you should probably find a different career. For freaks like me, I actually love Excel and that makes me love my job working in accounting. Likewise, if you hate sales, you probably won’t like being a promoter. As best as you can, reflect on past jobs, classes, and life experiences to determine the key characteristics and day-to-day actions of that job, and see if that’s something you think you’ll actually like doing for a while.
Now, just like you reflected on what you didn’t like there, reflect on what you’ve been good at and what you like. Think of times you got good feedback from a boss, a professor, or a friend. What projects were you working on then? What tools were you using? Did you like doing the same thing everyday, or did you prefer having a mix? Did you like the standard 9-5 hours, or did you like it when your shift started at 4 PM because you’re more of a night owl? Did you like that projects took weeks to complete or did you prefer doing tasks that took a few hours at maximum? The signs are everywhere here. You don’t need to try to make a career fit you, you just need to fit your career.
Picking your career
The beautiful thing about the music industry is that anyone can find something they love in it, other than music. For you, it could be publicity, or software engineering, or management. Allow me to share some summarizing thoughts as a way to help you navigate this knowledge.
Pick two: As I mentioned earlier in this article, I recommend that you pick one or two career paths (i.e., Live Music and Corporate). I would not recommend going more than two. It is too easy to spread yourself thin, and if you try too hard to be good at everything, you will be good at nothing.
Evaluate: There are a few key questions you should ask yourself to evaluate these potential careers:
Is the pay in this career going to be satisfactory for the lifestyle I want?
Are the hours too much or do I like being so entrenched in the industry?
How fulfilling is this for me creatively?
Does this fit my current education path? If not, how hard is it for me to pivot?
This isn’t all: this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of every single possible job in the music industry. I can confidently say it’s at least 80% of the jobs that exist in the music industry, but new opportunities are being created all the time with the emergence of new laws and new technologies. Twenty years ago we could never have imagined that there are people dedicated to writing bills to restrict AI in the music industry, and yet here they are. Today, you probably didn’t know that there are dedicated financial analysts to value music catalogs. If you have a specific fascination with something like that, you will find it.
About Me
In college, I found a true passion for helping students find their dream job in the music industry. I majored in accounting in college and was lucky enough to land an internship with Warner Music Group in a similar field. When I came back to school after that summer, I realized that many of my peers in business didn’t even realize the music business was an option for a career, despite music being a huge passion for so many people.
Since then, I have had internship interviews and offers from companies like Universal Music Group and Spotify. I started the Music Industry Club at the University of Tennessee which has since grown to 100 members, that has hosted such speakers as Ari Herstand, Lynn Gonzalez, Eric Hurt, and many many more. I run the supporting non-profit, the MIC Foundation. I now work as an analyst at Warner Music Group and want to help students who want to land that first internship or full-time job.