Music Therapist: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

What this specialty covers

Music therapists use music interventions to assess clients' strengths and needs, develop goals, implement services, and evaluate and document progress for individuals of all ages. Music therapists facilitate changes in physical, cognitive, emotional, and/or psychosocial health.

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For this specialty, 1,721 of 3,657 active records, or 47.1%, are flagged as sole proprietors in NPPES. That self-reported field can indicate an individual provider structure, but it is an imperfect proxy for private practice and does not by itself show ownership, employment arrangement, clinical independence, or whether a provider works alone.

By state

New NPI registrations by year

Counts reflect the year each NPI was first issued, among records still active today. The final year is partial: this data covers through 2026-01-11.

Data notes

• The sole-proprietor field is self-reported by the provider in NPPES and is an imperfect proxy for private practice.
• A sole-proprietor count shown as <11 is suppressed: the true value is below 11, which could include zero.
• NPI records are administrative identifiers and may not equal the number of unique music therapists, active practices, or service capacity.
• A provider may have multiple taxonomies, so using the primary taxonomy can exclude music therapists classified primarily under another specialty.
• Providers are counted once, by their primary taxonomy code only.

Source: CMS National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) Data Dissemination file, FOIA-disclosable public data under CMS-6060-N. Aggregated by Hero EMR on 2026-08-03; deactivated NPIs excluded; specialty assigned from the primary taxonomy code (NUCC 25.1). Counts below 11 are suppressed. Individual providers are never published. All provider data pages.

Common questions