I personally produce music for local recording artist, and soon im headed off to college. I want to know what i should be majoring in if i plan to own a record label. At college i also want to learn about production. Should i be looking for muisc industry? and what colleges are good ? please help!!!
You’ll want to major in music production or close to it. When I Googled “music production major” a bunch of stuff came up. Start there. And the #1 school that immediately comes to mind: Berklee College of Music in Boston. I also know some graduates of Belmont in Nashville who know live in LA and work in the industry.
It doesn’t matter what you major in for a career in music production. What matters are your skills and connections in the industry. A lot of music producers don’t even have college degrees. And importantly, no major is going to help you own a record label. There’s basically two ways for you to do that: start your own label, or buy a label from someone else. Starting your own label requires some musical talent but really a talent for recruiting and managing artists and other employees and growing the business up. Buying a label…well, that requires capital.
However, a music-related major is probably a good bet. Music industry or music business can be a good major - although some music industry majors really focus much more on the management, marketing, finance side rather than any kind of production. Music production is also a good major, if for no other reason than schools with music production majors typically have the resources and equipment or access to it you’ll need to learn about production.
Probably the most famous current program in that vein is USC’s newish Iovine and Young Academy, which is focused on business and innovation in the arts. It’s a brand new school and a brand new program, but USC is well-known in the arts and Dre and Iovine are two of the biggest music producers in history (Iovine having started Interscope).
A couple of schools with music business/industry majors are University of Miami, SUNY-Oneonta, CU Denver, Berklee, UCLA (minor), Florida A&M (within their music department), Syracuse, Ramapo College of NJ, Belmont University, Florida International, Drexel, NYU-Steinhardt and CSU-Northridge. USC also has a formal music industry major in their Thornton School of Music.
There’s this major called ‘Music Business’ offered by NYU and a few other schools.
Look into it
In addition to all of the above, look into NYU, Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. It is within the Tisch School of the Arts.They offer several Music Entrepreneur tracks and are heavily involved in the music industry. However, it is extremely competitive and one of the most selective of music programs. Their acceptance rate is <10% historically.
The programs aren’t as obvious on the website but I would also suggest checking it out in addition to all of the ones listed above. Excellent academics and music education and exposure. This program is different from Music Business in NYU’s Steinhart school-music business which is very good.
Look into Drexel University’s music management program. it is supposed to be very good and they have the co-op program too.