Music Row

When Nashville’s Belmont University — then a mere college — introduced a music business degree in 1973, a good portion of the city’s music pros scoffed at the endeavor.

“There was a bit of resentment that somebody was going to try to take somebody’s job,” remembers Doug Howard, who started as a student in January 1976 and went on to become the dean of the Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business from 2015-2022. “I literally had somebody say to me, ‘You can’t teach what we do in school.’ My thing was the 10,000 hours, you know — I discovered The Beatles in 1964, and I never stopped listening. I had been a student maybe longer than [they] had. I just couldn’t say that.”

Belmont will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its music business school on Oct. 3 in a different position. Scores of students with a passion for music debunked Music Row’s skepticism, demonstrating their enthusiasm by working for free at thousands of internships, learning a specialized business and contributing their formal lessons — and their determined ingenuity — to a Nashville entertainment industry that is arguably more professional in 2023 than the ’73 version.

Belmont is a big reason for that. Its vast list of former students includes Brad Paisley, Trisha Yearwood, Warner Chappell Nashville president/CEO Ben Vaughn, songwriter Hillary Lindsey (“Burn It Down,” “Blue Ain’t Your Color”), recording engineer Chuck Ainlay, Sony Music Nashville chairman/CEO Big Yellow Dog Music partner/CEO Carla Wallace, song plugger Sherrill Blackman, producer-guitarist Dann Huff (Kane Brown, Keith Urban) and Morris Higham Management partner Clint Higham, just to name a few.

In short, a Belmont music business degree is as helpful on Music Row as a Harvard law degree is in Washington, D.C., politics.

“I had no idea it would be this important to who I became,” Paisley says. “I got there, and I saw a recording studio and internship programs that allowed me to go hang out at ASCAP for free and walk into music meetings.”

In one of his first assignments, Paisley was required to interview someone active in music. He didn’t settle for one person — he interviewed three: former Desert Rose Band guitarist John Jorgenson, singer-songwriter Mike Reid (“I Can’t Make You Love Me,” “Stranger in My House”) and bluegrass musician Carl Jackson. In a stroke of luck, Jorgenson returned the student’s call with an invitation to come down to a studio where he was recording. Paisley ended up sitting next to Jorgenson while he played the session.

Belmont is one of dozens of schools that now offer music business degrees, but it has some advantages. It was one of the first colleges to develop a program, and it’s literally at the end of Music Row — an intern can work for two hours between classes and easily return to work when their last class ends. The locale itself creates potential.

“My first thing ever was as a seat filler for the TNN/Music City News Awards,” remembers Vaughn. “I ended up sitting in Kix Brooks’ seat most of the night because they were winning everything. So I sat by his wife, and we had this nice conversation, and I’m like, ‘This is crazy.’ I’m 18 years old, but even stuff like that, if you’re not part of Belmont, you’re just not knowing there’s all these little opportunities and things to be involved in.”

The program’s founder, the late Bob Mulloy, literally grew up on what would become Music Row — he was raised in a house that was eventually leveled to make way for BMI — and he had a stiff task. Belmont was a Baptist school, and there was plenty of pushback from higher-ups who feared that a music-biz degree would attract undesirable students. Howard, who had a shaggy appearance in the mid-’70s, remembers being grilled mercilessly by Mulloy.

“Those early years, he wanted guys and girls to come that were really committed to be in a profession,” Howard recalls. “He had this very stern [air]. And we’re scared of it. But I got it. He was under the microscope, and he put a tone to us that, ‘Hey, guys, the whole program depends on you.’ ”

Howard ended up becoming a publishing executive and Lyric Street senior vp of A&R, building on both his studies and the contacts that Belmont afforded. Mulloy may have seemed tough in the program’s earliest years, but he was a champion for his students.

“Mr. Malloy was my survey [of a music business] teacher,” says Vaughn. “He says, ‘Look to your left, look to your right. The people that are your peers and classmates will be people you work with in the industry.’ And he was right, man. He was so right.”

Indeed, Vaughn counts one of his biggest rivals, Sony Music Publishing Nashville president/CEO Rusty Harmon, as a classmate, as well as producer Jeremy Stover (Justin Moore, Travis Denning) and songwriter Ashley Gorley (“Last Night,” “Truck Bed”). Howard formed friendships with songwriter-producer and record exec Mark Wright and songwriter Gordon Kennedy (“Change the World,” “You Move Me”). Florida Georgia Line founders Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley met at Belmont. And Paisley was introduced to frequent co-writers Frank Rogers and Kelley Lovelace, as well as Cindy Mabe, now Universal Music Group president/CEO.

“You get what you put into it,” says Paisley, who transferred into the program. “That was the thing. I was interning, I was going to studios, I was interviewing people, I was shaking hands with anybody that would shake my hand. Because I was like, ‘Look, I’m a junior already. I got four semesters to do this. I got to figure out how to do this for a living or go back to West Virginia and teach guitar lessons.’ ”

Belmont has helped hundreds of students figure it out over the last 50 years. And those students have in turn brought an intense desire to participate in the industry and make a difference. Many are now running Music Row.

“These are passionate people coming to town,” Howard says, “who love this business and want to make it better.”

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