The program's distinctively flexible curriculum permits students to sample liberally from departmental graduate seminars, and also encourages them to explore course offerings in other academic units. Students begin learning about the methods and materials of music studies with core seminars in ethnomusicology and historiography, while creating individually tailored programs of further study that suit their scholarly and professional needs. This might mean developing fluency in textual analysis, ethnography, historiography, critical theory and science and technology studies, all of which fall within the program's inclusive approach to the study of music and sound.

The smaller size of the program facilitates close mentoring relationships with the faculty, allowing students to receive guidance about their research from scholars with a variety of interests and approaches. Recent dissertations have explored such diverse matters as Afrocentric consciousness in Brazilian capoeira, carnival performance in mixed-race South African communities, Scandinavian white nationalism and Turkish intellectual property law. Faculty interests and seminar offerings range across fields like critical organology, ecocriticism, improvisation studies, intellectual property, sound studies, technoculture and transnationalism. Students also have the option of taking courses within the music department's outstanding Ph.D. program in Music and Multimedia Composition, of developing performing skills in several ensembles, and of engaging with campus entities like the Cogut Institute for the Humanities or the Brown Arts Initiative. A Brown doctoral degree in musicology and ethnomusicology leads to a career in college and university teaching, or to a position in applied work outside the academy.