UNT has long been renowned for its music program, with notable alumni including Norah Jones and Don Henley. And we'd be remiss if we didn't mention its acclaimed jazz department, which includes the seven-time Grammy-nominated One O'Clock Jazz Band.
This new degree program, which is unique in its emphasis on contemporary music, business principles and entrepreneurship, aims to do more than foster talent and creativity. The team behind it wants to ensure their graduates get paid as well.
“Really, it's about enabling students to just express themselves and refine their creativity and do so in a way that their projects have commercial viability,” says program coordinator Federico Llach.
In other words, they’re creating a music degree your parents won’t be afraid of.
The program is built around the idea that music is as desirable (and hireable) a skill as any noncreative pursuit. While the Commercial Music program will provide space and support for its students' artistic pursuits, the school also intends to prepare students for aspects of their career beyond the creative side of things.
The degree will offer three tracks: Commercial Music Production, Business of Commercial Music and Music for Media. Film and game composers, producers and engineers, and even agents and promoters are just some of the diverse career options on which this program focuses.
Ashleigh Smith is a jazz and R&B performer and an alumna of UNT's vocal jazz performance program. She says her education prepared her for the career she has today.
"I wouldn't be the musician that I am without my time at UNT and the relationships and the skills that I've learned," she says. "I had a heavy jazz background so I didn't actually know [...] what I was doing, so my time at UNT really gave me the skill set to be a working musician."
Smith was excited to hear about the new Commercial Music program. As much as her time at UNT prepared her to be a professional musician, the industry is still full of logistical nuances she wishes she had learned ahead of time.
"I wish I had known more about copyright laws and sync licensing and how to register a song correctly if it has multiple providers," she says. "Or if you're the writer, you know, who gets this percentage? How do you get producer points? I wish I would have known more about that because I had to learn just kind of by doing it and making mistakes and having to go back and fix it."
The choice to pursue a university degree is a hot topic of discussion in any creative field. Music degree programs often offer training, resources and networking opportunities that you’re less likely to find in the outside world.
“A lot of our focus is on establishing internships and direct connections with the industry,” says Llach. “Having access to places like recording studios is also going to streamline the mode of production for our students.”
On the other hand, college is expensive and time-consuming. Many musicians pursue the self-taught route and find success without being buried in student loan debt. And, perhaps most damningly, many careers in the music industry don’t require degrees at all.
While Llach is intrigued by the growing opportunities to learn about and create music independently, he believes that the community and opportunities for feedback in a college setting are unbeatable.
“You have to be there to really experience it, but the amount of sort of creative things going on and collaborations that are happening is really preparing students to push themselves beyond what they thought they could do,” he says.
When you’re going into a field where a degree isn’t required, there’s a question of whether going to college is “worth it.” The answer, according to some, isn’t about the degree at all.
Tre Nagella, a four-time Grammy-winning producer and audio engineer, has worked with artists Kirk Franklin, Lady Gaga, Blake Shelton and others. He also writes and produces music for advertising campaigns, which he says make up the bulk of his income.
“Typically, commercial music will pay more money,” Nagella says. “Unless you're working with superstar artists or you're doing huge albums, then obviously those can pay really well. But working with, like, local bands, indie projects, small record labels, it’s more challenging. It's a lot of work for a little bit of money. But when you're doing commercial music, they're paying not just for your hourly time for you to record someone. They're paying for your creativity.”
Nagella does have an education in production and engineering, but not from a traditional university. He has an associate's degree from Full Sail Center for the Recording Arts (now Full Sail University). In his field, Nagella says, nobody asks where you went to school or if you have a degree. All your client cares about is whether you know what you’re doing.
“You can say you have a piano performance degree, but people just want to hear you play piano,” he says. “Sort of the same thing for the studio or being a producer.”
For many careers in the music industry, however, a college or technical school can be a great place to learn these invaluable skills. In some fields, there are few opportunities to learn them anywhere else.
“If you're gonna go be an orchestrator and score movies, you need to attend school. Not necessarily for the degree, but for the knowledge,” Nagella says. “I don't know how you're going to learn how to conduct an orchestra without going to a university like that.”
Nagella also believes that composing music for ad agencies is a whole different beast from his other artistic pursuits.
“There are compositional aspects and arrangement aspects, [...] and then you also get into marketing and advertising, which has a huge amount to do with it,” he says. “It's not all about the music. It's also about selling something and about branding the company. So there's aspects that are difficult to learn if you're just studying music.”
As it happens, “composer for advertising” is one of the careers the UNT College of Music says a Commercial Music degree will prepare students for.
There’s no clear-cut, universal answer for whether pursuing a music degree is the best idea, but maybe it’s time to at least erase the stigma. The job prospects for music majors seem about as good as anyone else’s.
The Commercial Music BA program will launch at the UNT College of Music in the fall of 2025. Applications will open on Sept. 1. More information about the program can be found on the university's website.
