Purpose: The purpose of this study was to review and analyze the trend and issues of nursing research on music therapy. This study was aimed to help direct developing better music therapy programs in the future. Method: We reviewed 57 dissertations and published articles from 1983 to Feb. 2005 that were related to music therapy in nursing. Result: Among the 57 published researches on music therapy, 47 (82.5%) were dissertations and 10 (17.5%) were published articles. Among the 57 researches, 55 (96.5%) were experiential researches and 2 (3.5%) were non-experimental researches. Surgical patients were the most popular subject for researches. The number of subject was a minimum of 7 people and maximum of 143 people. Listening to music 41 (74.5%) was the most popular program for music therapy. Among 55 researches, 33 (60.0%) had a music therapy session of 25-60 minutes and this was the most popular time duration of therapy. Among all the 108 dependent variables, 57 (52.8%) were psychological variables, 40 (37.0%) were physical variables and 11 (10.2%) were social-cognitive variables. Conclusion: There is an urgent need to develop systematic music therapy programs with different nursing interventions, as based on theories and principles while considering the physical, psychological, and social characteristic of the subjects.