For the fifth consecutive year, Billboard magazine has ranked Occidental College in its annual list of Top Music Business Schools.
Billboard selects schools for its ranking through executive recommendations, alumni information provided by honorees from multiple power lists, information requested from each school, and a decade of reporting on these programs. The magazine praised Oxy for launching a “new chapter in the story of music business education,” highlighting the College’s new John Branca Institute for Music, which was announced in June.
Oxy alumni include such prominent music industry figures as former Warner Music Group CEO Steve Cooper ’68; Charlie Cohen ’78, president of TV, film, and live theater at Warner Music Group; manager Ian Montone ’89 (Jack White, LCD Soundsystem); music attorney John Branca ’72, Billboard’s 2016 Lawyer of the Year; music attorney Richard Leher ’66 (Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam); Welz Kauffman ’83, former president and CEO of Chicago’s Ravinia Festival; and the late Guy Carawan ’49, musical director of Tennessee’s Highlander Folk School, credited with turning “We Shall Overcome” into a civil rights anthem.
