In 2012, there were reportedly over one million United States citizens aged 25 through 64 who held a degree of some kind in the visual and performing arts. Of those one million, 780 thousand possessed Bachelor’s degrees, 225 those Major degrees, 35 thousand professional degrees, and 30 thousand Doctorates. Not only is this a significantly smaller number of people when compared to more popular majors, such as business or the social sciences, the degree also earns a significantly smaller amount of total income. While an individual with a professional degree in the visual and performing arts can hope to earn an estimated amount of $3million throughout their entire life, someone with the same type of degree in business can hope to earn anywhere between $3.8-4.8million as their work-life earnings. This amount is even smaller for the majority of people who obtain solely a bachelor’s degree in the visual and performing arts, whose total work-life earnings is roughly estimated to be $1.97million.

Yet while there are such a small number of people with performing arts degrees and the income for those individuals is predicted to be minuscule, talking to someone working towards or in possession of said degree would quickly convince you there is nothing better fit for that person. This is not meant in that they could achieve no greater, mind you, but rather that the love these people hold for the music that has passionately held them is so strong that it is simply common sense that they dedicate their lives towards it. For many, music is just a tool or a source of entertainment. It is something they listen to while at parties or getting work done, a “sound” in the background that they barely pay attention to. At the same time, there are many others who use music as an escape—people who use it to help them relax, cope with aggressive emotions, or even to experience a story in an “entertainment” method not often considered a narrative. Prokofiev explored this idea of narrative within music with his works “Peter and the Wolf” and the “Lieutenant Kije” suite, however, that is beside the point for now.

No matter how you view or use music, the most important point to recognize that is not often considered by everyone is this—music is art. It is a canvas of sound that allows for expression in ways that no other medium can, not by seeing it, but by feeling it. Just the same as people get degrees in English and study the history and meaning behind literature, so do those with music degrees study the history and depth behind pieces. They examine the art they hear and give expressive performances to demonstrate the power of what they study. A music major does not choose their major for money, just like a film studies major doesn’t—they choose their major for what they love.