Are you female? Many of the women’s colleges offer excellent merit. If you’re interested in music business you could use the consortia at these schools to get the classes and contacts that you need.
- Mt. Holyoke (5-college consortium means you get 5 colleges worth of activities, campuses, class offerings etc)
- Smith (ditto above re: consortium)
- Bryn Mawr (ditto above re: a DIFFERENT consortium)
- Simmons (ditto above re: a DIFFERENT consortium this time in Boston, including one of Boston's really excellent music academies)
- Wellesley--maybe they have cross reg with other schools for the music stuf that you need.
- Agnes Scott
Also for coed look at: Muhlenberg–good music and has business classes.and offers merit – https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg04_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=623
Syracuse has a music business program. They do have merit. This website (https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=130 ) shows that Syracuse gave about 20% of students with zero financial need merit awards that on average were 15K.
Ithaca has a music business program but it’s very expensive. You may want to throw them an app just to see what happens knowing that it’s very expensive and that you would probably choose elsewhere.
Five Towns College is known for music industry stuff. The tuition sticker price is a loe $37K (total including everything) and they give 95% of students about $3500 off through merit – https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1210