Use music as clinical treatment in hospitals, schools and hospices. A real degree, a real internship and a national board exam.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
The median pay is about $77,930 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $46,540 at the lower end to about $152,530 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
4 to 6 years after high school, on the usual route.
$40,000 to $50,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
It depends where you work. You need a license, certificate or registration in Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Mississippi, North Dakota, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington. Elsewhere there is none to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Very high demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$77,930
Bottom tenth
$46,540
Top tenth
$152,530
The published median is $77,930 a year, with the bottom tenth earning $46,540 or less and the top tenth $152,530 or more. Read that top number carefully: the federal survey does not count music therapists on their own, it files them inside a residual group called Therapists, All Other, which also holds other kinds of therapist. There is no official figure for music therapists alone.
$46,540 to $58,850
The bottom tenth and bottom quarter of the Therapists, All Other group, 2025
The survey publishes no separate starting figure. Full-time salaried positions exist but are not everywhere. A lot of new therapists start by stitching together two part-time contracts in different settings.
$58,850 to $105,760
Half of the Therapists, All Other group earn between these two figures, 2025
Private practice and contracting are billed per session, and contracting carries all the risk: you buy your own insurance, chase invoices and get paid nothing for a canceled session or a snow day.
Roughly, all in
$40,000 to $50,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
Both ends are a four year bachelor's degree in music therapy at a public university at in-state rates, at about $10,000 a year at the low end and $12,000 at the high end, plus the board certification exam at a few hundred dollars. There is no cheap door here, because only an approved degree program gets you the required clinical internship and the right to sit the exam. That internship is often unpaid or pays only a small stipend, which is a real cost the tuition figure does not show. Keeping the credential later needs 100 continuing education credits every five years plus a renewal fee.
File the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) every year. Hospitals, school districts and nonprofit hospices are qualifying employers for PSLF (Public Service Loan Forgiveness), which cancels remaining federal loans after 10 years of payments.
Hospital or school benefits
Health insurance, retirement plan and paid leave on a salaried position.
Loan forgiveness
Most employers in this field are nonprofits or public bodies.
Continuing education paid for
You need credits to keep your certification and good employers cover them.
An instrument budget, sometimes
Guitars, keyboards and percussion wear out fast in clinical use.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
One national credential gates the whole field: board certification. Everything else leads to it.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Play an instrument well, sing, and take biology and psychology. Guitar, piano and voice are the three working tools of the job.
Approved degree program
4 years
A bachelor's degree in music therapy from a program approved by the American Music Therapy Association. You audition on your instrument to get in.
Clinical internship
About 6 months
Supervised clinical training in a hospital, school or care setting. It is required, it is full time, and it is frequently unpaid.
Board exam
One exam
Pass the exam from the CBMT (Certification Board for Music Therapists) to earn the MT-BC (Music Therapist, Board Certified) credential.
Work, and keep the credential alive
Ongoing
Board certification lasts 5 years and renews on 100 continuing education credits.
Music
You need real playing ability on guitar, piano or voice. This is not optional.
Psychology
The clinical half of the degree is developmental and abnormal psychology.
Biology and anatomy
You will study how the brain and the nervous system respond to sound.
Volunteering with children or older adults
Programs look for it, and it tells you early whether clinical work suits you.
There is no single national license for music therapists. What there is instead is one national credential: the MT-BC (Music Therapist, Board Certified), awarded by the CBMT (Certification Board for Music Therapists) after an approved degree, a clinical internship and an exam. Essentially every employer requires it. On top of that, 15 states now require a state license or certificate: 14 license music therapists directly, and New York regulates the work through a creative arts therapist license instead. California and Iowa only protect the title. Check your own state before you pick a program, because that decides whether you also need a master's degree.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Neurologic music therapy
Training in using rhythm and music for stroke, brain injury and Parkinson's rehabilitation. Hospitals look for this.
Hospice and palliative care
A common employer of music therapists.
Autism and special education
School districts write music therapy into individual education plans, which means funded positions.
A master's degree
Required for a creative arts therapist license in some states, and for supervising and teaching.
A big repertoire
You need songs from every decade because you will work with people of every age.
Improvisation
Sessions rarely go to plan. Being able to play by ear matters more than reading well.
Documentation skills
Clinical notes, goals and progress reports are part of every session in a medical setting.
A car
Contract therapists drive between several sites in a week.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Check the ward list, load a guitar and a bag of small percussion onto a cart. A morning group in the rehabilitation unit using rhythm to work on walking pace. A bedside session with a patient who cannot speak but sings every word of a song from 1962. Lunch, then notes. Afternoon in the children's unit, then a family who want a recording made while they still can. You write up every session, because in a hospital everything is documented.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Musicians played in United States veterans hospitals after both world wars, and doctors noticed the patients responded. Hospitals started hiring the musicians, universities built degree programs to train them, and the profession grew out of that.
People with some kinds of aphasia, who have lost the ability to speak after a stroke, can still sing lyrics they knew before. Therapies built on that observation are a standard part of stroke rehabilitation now.
A steady external beat helps people with Parkinson's disease walk more evenly. It is called rhythmic auditory stimulation, and it is one of the clearest examples of music used as treatment rather than as comfort.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Mental health first, then the rest of the field. See every career in health.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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