---
title: "Music Supervisor"
description: "Chooses and licenses the songs and recordings heard in films, TV shows, ads and video games, balancing the story's needs against the music budget."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/music-supervisor"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Music Supervisor

**Category:** Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media · **SOC code:** 27-2041 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 27-2041.00

Chooses and licenses the songs and recordings heard in films, TV shows, ads and video games, balancing the story's needs against the music budget.

Also advertised as: Film Music Supervisor; Television Music Supervisor; Music Clearance Supervisor; Music Coordinator.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $73,710 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $35.44/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $39,880 to $165,760, with the middle half between $53,110 and $104,090
- **Total US employment:** 12,540
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +1.2% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 4,200 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 41/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 12,540 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $39,880 |
| 25th | $53,110 |
| 50th (median) | $73,710 |
| 75th | $104,090 |
| 90th | $165,760 |
| Mean (average) | $90,470 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NJ | $122,750 | $112,817 | 210 |
| CA | $93,090 | $84,077 | 2,510 |
| CO | $88,460 | $85,840 | 160 |
| DC | $84,040 | $76,469 | 140 |
| NY | $82,930 | $76,843 | 2,370 |
| UT | $82,570 | $83,519 | 150 |
| TN | $79,640 | $86,688 | 400 |
| WI | $78,690 | $83,628 | 200 |
| MA | $78,620 | $74,340 | 340 |
| IN | $77,270 | $82,793 | 200 |
| CT | $77,070 | $74,385 | 120 |
| WA | $75,060 | $70,141 | 260 |
| HI | $74,570 | $67,821 | 90 |
| GA | $67,100 | $69,683 | Not published by BLS |
| TX | $65,570 | $67,558 | 480 |

15 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 30 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/music-supervisor/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/music-supervisor.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 51,100 in the 2025–2035 base year to 51,700 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 600 jobs, or +1.2%. Slower than average: 1.2% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 4,200 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** Less than 5 years.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Master's Degree | 28.2% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 24.0% |
| Doctoral Degree | 20.6% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 7.9% |
| Some College Courses | 6.2% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 5.1% |

## What the work involves

- Spot scenes with the director to decide where licensed songs or score are needed
- Search catalogs and pitch playlists of candidate tracks for each scene
- Identify the publishers and labels that control each composition and master recording
- Negotiate synchronization and master use license fees and terms
- Track the music budget and report clearance status to producers
- Prepare and file cue sheets with performing rights organizations
- Coordinate with the composer, music editor and post-production team
- Arrange on-camera performances and pre-recorded playback for shoots

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Management of Personnel Resources — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Fine Arts — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Philosophy and Theology — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Hearing Sensitivity — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Fluency of Ideas — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Originality — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Information Ordering — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Artistic (A), Enterprising (E), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| A — Artistic | 7.00 |
| E — Enterprising | 5.29 |
| C — Conventional | 3.58 |
| S — Social | 3.04 |
| I — Investigative | 2.28 |
| R — Realistic | 2.07 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ENFP | 75.0 |
| ENFJ | 71.1 |
| ENTP | 68.0 |
| INFP | 65.5 |
| INFJ | 61.0 |

Best-fitting types: ENFP, ENFJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Music Director and Composer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/music-director-and-composer) — median $73,710
- [Musician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/musician) — median Not published by BLS
- [Choreographer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/choreographer) — median $55,310
- [Art, Drama, and Music Teacher, Postsecondary](https://nuecareer.com/careers/art-drama-and-music-teacher-postsecondary) — median $78,620
- [Producer and Director](https://nuecareer.com/careers/producer-and-director) — median $90,360
- [Talent Director](https://nuecareer.com/careers/talent-director) — median $90,360
- [Music Therapist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/music-therapist) — median $77,930
- [Poet, Lyricist and Creative Writer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/poet-lyricist-and-creative-writer) — median $76,910
- [Art Director](https://nuecareer.com/careers/art-director) — median $114,850
- [Media Programming Director](https://nuecareer.com/careers/media-programming-director) — median $90,360

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/music-supervisor