Music Business & Recording Arts

The control room of UNC's professional recording studio, Studio A.

About Studying Music Business & Recording Arts

We offer you a customizable program where you can emphasize either business or recording, or balance the coursework between the two disciplines. The trend in the professional world is to put careers together through personal marketing and the use of technology. This program prepares you for an exciting career in a rapidly changing music industry through the study of music industry and business fundamentals, law, entrepreneurship and hands-on experience in our state-of-the-art recording studio spaces. You’ll gain the technical and aesthetic skills needed to create, produce and record music.

No audition is required, but you may audition for scholarship consideration.

Degree Programs

Bachelor’s Degree

Get hands-on experience.

Large-scale Recording Studio (Studio A)
4 pre/post-production Project Studios
Computer Lab with 30 MIDI stations
Avid Pro Tools certification opportunities
Over 25 large and small ensembles for performance opportunities

Apply to this Program See Audition Requirements Music Ensembles

Creative Spaces Beyond the Classroom Alumni

Picture Yourself in Our Spaces

Studio A, Frasier Hall, 96 Recording Studio with s band recording.

Studio A: Professional Recording Studio

Based on Pro-Tools HDX, UNC’s recording studio offers a hybrid format of both analog and digital. On the analog side, Studio A is equipped with a vast collection of microphones, over 40 channels of outboard microphones preamps (tube and solid state), a myriad of outboard compressors, channel strips, equalizers and a control surface. On the virtual side, the studio offers a great collection of plug-ins including Fab Filter, Acustica Audio, Waves, SoundToys, Slate Digital, Audio Ease and Plugin Alliance, among many others.

The recording studio is used both as a professional facility and as a classroom for recording and mixing courses. UNC students can take advantage of discounted hourly rates.

See our list of Microphones & Outboard Gear

Student working on a music recording project.

Project Studios

The Project Studios give students the opportunity to practice on professional equipment or work on pre/post-production of class projects. The four project studios are equipped with Apple Mac Pros and an assortment of outboard gear from Solid State Logic, Warm Audio, Lexicon and more. These computers are equipped with the same plug-in collections as the recording studio, making it very easy to transfer projects from one place to the other.

For composers and sound designers, the project studios also offer renowned Digital Audio Workstations and a wide collection of virtual instruments and samplers including East/West, Spitfire, Native Instruments, MOTU, Slate Digital and Toontrack.

These rooms have advanced mixers and control surfaces:

93 – Solid State Logic XL Desk analog mixer and UF-8 control surface
93 A & C – Mackie Control Universal Pro control surface
93 B – Slate’s Raven MTi

Recorded in Studio A

Discover Your Path

Arts Entrepreneurship Foundry

The Foundry is a free series of arts entrepreneurship workshops and talks on portfolio building, resume and cover letter writing, branding, self-promotion and marketing, contracts and more! You’ll get to hear from Center for Arts Entrepreneurship Distinguished Speakers and UNC faculty and staff.

Certificates

Socrates Garcia working in the recording studio.

Recording Arts Certificate

If you are a music student who wants to go into the music technology industry and/or produce your own music, this certificate is for you. You’ll take 6 courses that will give you a solid foundation in contemporary technologies and related techniques such as MIDI, digital music notation, sequencing, samplers, recording, microphone techniques, mixing, composition, video scoring, music production, critical listening, music publishing, copyrights, promotion, marketing and more.

2024 Arts Entrepreneurship Foundry Networking workshop led by Dr. Harmon.

Arts Entrepreneurship Certificate

You can incorporate the Arts Entrepreneurship Certificate into your undergraduate major in many different ways to get yourself ready for the professional arts world. You can choose the 15 credits required for this certificate according to your interests.