Music Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 1,301 music schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 1,236 music schools have some social media presence, having accounts on at least one of the three major social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Of the schools that have a social media presence, the greatest number, almost 96% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 65.5% of the 1,301 music schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 11% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.1%), black (5.8%) and yellow (5.3%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on music school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest music schools in the nation, are as follows:

1. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%
2. Miami Dade College: white 10% and blue 2.9%
3. Ohio State University - Main Campus: white 30% and grey 3.4%

Font

The largest number, nearly 42%, of music school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on music school websites include Verdana (22.3%) and Helvetica (8.6%).

The largest music school's websites use the following fonts:

1. Arizona State University: Arial
2. Miami Dade College: Arial
3. Ohio State University - Main Campus: Helvetica

Social Presence

Exactly 924 music schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 361 YouTube channel subscribers. The music schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 113,180 subscribers
2. Harvard University: 28,331 subscribers
3. Yale University: 20,055 subscribers

Exactly 1,069 music schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,794 Twitter account followers. The music schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Harvard University: 69,704 followers
2. Indiana University - Bloomington: 27,945 followers
3. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers

Web Metrics

Although all music schools have websites, only about 20% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 80.3% of music school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The music schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Creighton University: 7,788 broken links
2. Doane College - Crete: 4,754 broken links
3. Harrisburg Area Community College - Harrisburg: 4,597 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on music school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The music school websites with the cleanest websites, i.e., least number of HTML and CSS validation errors are:

1. Arizona Christian University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. California Lutheran University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The music school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point: 0 HTML validation errors; 1,213 CSS validation errors
2. Bergen Community College: 178 HTML validation errors; 869 CSS validation errors
3. Mt. San Jacinto Community College District: 74 HTML validation errors; 841 CSS validation errors