Hi! My name is Ben, I am currently very close to apply to colleges. I have a question about the recommendation letter. I am applying for commercial music major as a singer-songwriter. I am in a Chinese international high school and taking the A-Level curriculum. I decided to ask my A-Level music teacher to write me a recommendation letter. Does that recommendation letter count as a “Teacher’s recommendation” or “Other recommenders” on the CommonApp? I think even if it is an art subject, it’s still very academic.
Music can indeed be an academic subject. Is this a teacher for performance? I would ask the schools you are applying to.
Thank you so much for your reply. The teacher is a music teacher who teach us theory, music history and we write classical music analysis essays as well. The schools I’m applying to are USC Thornton, NYU Clive Davis, UMich SMTD, Miami Frost, Belmont, Berklee~
Probably worth a call to each program; my kid had a very similar list and used a more “traditionally” academic teacher for “teacher” and music teacher as “other.”
Then it is an academic music class. My kid is getting a PhD in music- not performance. A music teacher who teaches theory, history, composition, analysis and the like should certainly be considered an academic teacher.
Some schools specify a humanities and science/math teacher. Music falls within “humanities” in this sense.
To be more comfortable, sure, go ahead and ask, but I would find it offensive for any school to say a music class such as the one you describe is not academic!! Especially the schools on your list!!!
Are you saving the “other” category for performance teachers?
I think it is perfectly appropriate to have performance teachers and/or directors for the “other” and have an academic music teacher as one of the conventional regular recommenders.
Great list by the way.
My kid has extra references (unconventional schooling situation) but we certainly used music teachers as “teacher” and “other” in the common app in other apps.
All I was going to say that may or may not be an issue for you is it’s a bit confusing if you use someone as a “Teacher” on some apps and as an “Other” on different apps. It’s unfortunate but teachers had to upload twice to the common app. So just make sure everything gets uploaded where it needs to be. You can see when teachers submit. We had 2 different teachers that had to do this and they were both confused. They got 2 different prompts but they probably looked the same unless you were reading carefully.
Thank you so much for the replies!! I too would feel very offended if this is not considered academic 
I also have recommendation letters from professors at Berklee and Miami Frost, and I have a songwriting teacher outside of school, I think they belong to the “Other recommenders” more.
Agree completely with you. Good luck!