a master's degree in music is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #36 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
College Factual looked at 32 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Music Master's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 877 master's degrees in music during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Earn the music business degree that fits into the business world – and partners Southern New Hampshire University with world-renowned Berklee College of Music.
Choosing a Great Music School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of music for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
The overall quality of a master's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on music students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other music students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How easy is it for music to pay back their student loans after receiving their master's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized music related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for music students working on their master's degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Music Master's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Earn the music business degree that fits into the business world – and partners Southern New Hampshire University with world-renowned Berklee College of Music.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in music needs to look into University of Miami. Located in the suburb of Coral Gables, U Miami is a private not-for-profit university with a large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the music program make an average of $25,623 in the first couple years of working.
Belmont University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in music. Located in the large city of Nashville, Belmont is a private not-for-profit university with a medium-sized student population.
Master's students who receive their degree from the music program make around $31,018 in the first couple years of working.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in music needs to check out Florida State University. Florida State is a fairly large public university located in the city of Tallahassee.
Master's students who receive their degree from the music program earn about $26,016 in their early career salary.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in music needs to check out University of South Carolina - Columbia. Located in the midsize city of Columbia, UofSC is a public university with a very large student population.
Those music students who get their master's degree from University of South Carolina - Columbia receive $4,580 more than the average music grad.
Located in the large city of Lexington, UK is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Master's recipients from the music degree program at University of Kentucky earn $2,861 above the average college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
UT Knoxville is a very large public university located in the medium-sized city of Knoxville.
Master's recipients from the music degree program at The University of Tennessee - Knoxville make $3,342 more than the typical college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
Your choice of music for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
