For many years, the Swedish music export has been very successful. Previous research shows that the Swedish music export strongly has contributed to an increased interest among students to study popular music and musicproduction in Swedish higher education. In this study we have a hypothesis, built on observations made in higher education in music, that many of the students who apply to higher education in music often have ambitions to make it as artists rather than becoming musicians. Another assumption is that many of the students who apply to music producer programs in higher education mainly want to study music production in order to learn how record their own songs and create their own repertoire. Therefore they can show limited interest in producing others. Our ongoing study, moreover, clearly indicates that relatively little of the content in higher music education programs is focused on developing talents to full-fledged artists, very little of the musician programs and hardly at all in in the music production courses. It is thus possible to identify a gap between what is offered and what probably many students would need based on their overall aspirational goals. In order to create new knowledge about these issues and with the aim of contributing to the development of higher education in music, in this project we gather diverse data through interviews with key players in the Swedish music industry: artists, musicians and music producers. An important purpose is to identify core characteristics and important differences between these professions. Observation studies are also included in this project. In this paper we present selected results of the study focusing on some of the specific challenges that we have identified in the higher music education concerning the above-described goal conflict. We here especially focus on possible differences and similarities between music producers, musicians and artists regardless of whether it is about music performed live or produced for phonograms or the equivalent. Furthermore, we address and discuss the problem that programs and courses in higher education not always offer what the students want. In this paper we also present a model of music production. The model is based on results from the study andmay be useful in higher education for music producers as well as for musicians and future artists.