Ten years ago, Petra Kern and I asked a basic but important question:
What does music therapy practice look like around the world?
Our original international survey offered one of the first large-scale portraits of the global music therapy workforce. Nearly a decade later, we returned to that question.
The profession we found in 2025 was more confident, more entrepreneurial, more technologically connected, and active across a wider range of healthcare and community settings.
But it was also still confronting many of the same structural problems identified in the original study: limited public recognition, uneven regulation, inadequate compensation, and fragile employment systems.
Here’s the short version:
Music therapy has clearly grown.
The systems needed to support music therapists have not always grown with it.
That tension between professional progress and structural vulnerability is one of the most important findings of the new study.
Why Repeat a Global Survey?
Workforce surveys do more than count people.
They help us understand:
Who is entering and remaining in a profession
Where professionals work
Who receives services
How services are delivered
What barriers affect access and sustainability
What education, advocacy, and policy priorities should come next
Our first survey, conducted in 2016 and published in 2017, included responses from 2,495 music therapists associated with 19 World Federation of Music Therapy organizations across six world regions.
The 2025 follow-up study replicated and expanded that work. It included 1,183 practicing music therapists representing all eight WFMT regions and 25 professional organizations, with an overall response rate of 67.6%.
To update the questionnaire while preserving meaningful comparisons, we worked with an international focus group of experts representing seven world regions. The revised survey was pilot tested for clarity, accessibility, cultural relevance, and usability before its global launch.
This was not simply a new survey.
It was an opportunity to examine how an entire profession had changed over nearly a decade.
Five Changes That Stood Out
1. Music Therapists Are Increasingly Creating Their Own Opportunities
In 2016, approximately 16% of respondents reported creating their own positions.
By 2025, that figure had grown to 31%.
That increase reflects creativity, determination, and professional adaptability. Music therapists are identifying unmet needs, developing programs, opening private practices, and building roles that did not previously exist.
But entrepreneurship can tell two stories at once.
Creating new opportunities may indicate professional innovation. It may also mean that established healthcare, education, and community systems are still not creating enough sustainable positions.
The profession’s entrepreneurial growth should therefore be celebrated, but it should also prompt questions about job security, benefits, compensation, and institutional support.
2. Practice Is Shifting Toward Healthcare and Private Practice
Healthcare settings became increasingly prominent, rising from approximately 35% in 2016 to 46% in 2025.
Private practice also increased, from 21% to 31%.
These changes suggest expanding recognition of music therapy’s relevance to health, rehabilitation, mental health, wellness, and person-centered care.
At the same time, music therapists continue to work across educational and community programs. The profession is not moving into one single setting. It is becoming more flexible and distributed across systems.
That flexibility is a strength, but it can also make professional identity, regulation, funding, and workforce planning more complicated.
3. Music Therapy Is Reaching More People Across the Lifespan
The 2025 findings showed increased work with several age groups:
Early childhood involvement increased from 38% to 47%
Services for school-aged children increased from 51% to 57%
Services for adults ages 18–64 increased from 53% to 59%
Music therapists reported serving people with developmental disabilities, mental health needs, neurological conditions, medical concerns, and many other needs across the lifespan.
Access pathways also appear to be changing.
Self-referrals increased from 35% to 48%, while caregiver-initiated access increased from 36% to 49%.
These changes may reflect greater awareness among individuals and families, as well as growing interest in directly seeking supportive, nonpharmacological, and relationship-centered forms of care.
4. Technology Is Now Part of the Professional Landscape
Telepractice was largely absent from the original survey.
In 2025, approximately 18% of respondents reported using it as part of service delivery.
In-person care remains dominant with the relational nature of music therapy remains central, but digital tools and remote formats have become meaningful supplements to practice.
Interest in further education is also strong. Approximately two-thirds of respondents expressed interest in learning more about areas such as artificial intelligence and telepractice.
This does not mean technology should replace human interaction.
It means the profession must learn how to use technology thoughtfully, ethically, and responsibly to support access, documentation, education, communication, and continuity of care.
The next generation of music therapy training will need to prepare professionals for in-person, remote, and hybrid environments.
5. Clinical Confidence Has Grown—But Systemic Support Still Lags
One of the most encouraging findings was the increase in clinical confidence.
In the original study, approximately 49% of respondents indicated a high level of confidence in their professional skills. In 2025, that figure rose to approximately 70%.
Music therapists increasingly see themselves as capable, adaptable, and prepared to contribute to complex healthcare, educational, and community needs.
However, respondents continued to report low public awareness, inadequate funding, inconsistent regulation, and concerns about equitable compensation.
In other words:
Music therapists may be increasingly confident in what they can contribute, while remaining uncertain that the systems around them fully understand or support that contribution.
What Has Not Changed Enough
The original study identified several persistent concerns:
Limited governmental and regulatory recognition
Inconsistent employment opportunities
Inadequate or inequitable compensation
Uneven access to professional education
Insufficient research visibility
Vulnerable funding structures
Nearly a decade later, many of these concerns remain.
That does not mean advocacy and professional development efforts have failed. Progress has occurred in many countries and regions.
It does mean that professional growth alone does not automatically produce structural change.
A field can become more skilled, innovative, and visible while still lacking the policies, funding systems, employment protections, and public understanding required for long-term sustainability.
What the Findings Suggest We Should Do Next
The 2025 survey points toward several priorities for the coming decade.
Strengthen recognition and regulation
Music therapy organizations need coordinated strategies supporting public education, professional recognition, appropriate regulation, licensure where applicable, and clearer integration into healthcare, education, and community systems.
Improve employment and compensation
Professional growth is difficult to sustain when highly trained clinicians remain underpaid, lack benefits, or must continually create their own positions.
Global and regional conversations about compensation benchmarks, labor protections, and sustainable funding are overdue.
Expand access to education
Training and continuing education must be accessible, culturally responsive, and relevant to regional needs.
Curricula should also prepare music therapists for evolving practice areas, including telepractice, trauma-informed care, global health, interdisciplinary collaboration, and ethical uses of emerging technology.
Build cross-sector partnerships
The profession’s future will depend partly on stronger relationships with healthcare leaders, educators, researchers, policymakers, community organizations, technology specialists, and service users.
Music therapy cannot build its future in isolation.
Continue collecting workforce data
One survey cannot answer every question.
Regular workforce research helps organizations identify trends, evaluate progress, support advocacy, and make decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions.
A Broader Lesson About Professional Growth
Although this research focuses on music therapy, its findings reflect a challenge faced by many helping professions.
Professionals are often asked to become more innovative, entrepreneurial, technologically fluent, evidence-based, and responsive to growing community needs.
But innovation without infrastructure has limits.
A sustainable profession requires more than talented individuals. It requires:
Supportive policies
Accessible education
Fair compensation
Clear professional standards
Reliable funding
Effective leadership
Strong partnerships
Public understanding
The 2025 survey shows a music therapy profession with growing confidence, adaptability, and global relevance.
It also shows that the next decade cannot depend only on individual professionals working harder or creating their own opportunities.
The future must be built collectively.
Read the Research
Kern, P., & Tague, D. B. (2026). Global music therapy survey 2025: Developments and trends a decade later. Journal of Music Therapy, 63(1), 1–36. DOI: 10.1093/jmt/thag001
Kern, P., & Tague, D. B. (2017). Music therapy practice status and trends worldwide: An international survey study. Journal of Music Therapy. DOI: 10.1093/jmt/thx011
What changes have you observed in music therapy during the past decade?
Where do you see genuine progress? And where does the profession still need stronger systems, partnerships, and support?
I would be interested in hearing your perspective.
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