Hey Adam thanks so much for takin the time to help us out on here. Im a high school senior and am starting at Belmont next year as a commercial music major on bass guitar. Ive heard you had some connections with Belmont and was wondering which emphasis you thought would benefit me the most. I (like everyone else in the world it seems) would love to be a bass player as a living and i figure studying at Belmont might give me an edge I need. I can do performance or music business as my major emphasis although both are music degrees. Im wondering which one would open more doors as Brad Paisley did music business and through those internships that he got his big break but then also I might not get the playing experience as much? Thank you so much for helping!! 
understand i would never say a performance degree is a waste of time. you obviously devote a lot of time to your craft and work on mastering many different aspects of playing; however, a performance degree is not going to get you any gigs directly, per se. experience, networking, and relationship building is more integral to your success as a player. my jazz improv professor at georgia state actually told our class (full of performance majors) one day that a performance degree was a waste of time. he felt the better college investment was a theory or compositional degree if you wanted something that would be more useful if you wanted to teach in universities or colleges... fwiw, i suppose! 
