The integrated doctoral degree in music is a relatively new qualification in the South African tertiary education system and there is no broad consensus yet about its precise format or its artistic and scholarly requirements, even if there is agreement that it somehow fits into the field of what has become known as practice-based or artistic research. This article examines some of the key issues concerned, especially those of a music-specific (as opposed to a broadly aesthetic) nature. Consequently, it focuses on crucial epistemological and methodological questions through the perspective of concepts such as emergence, semiosis, truth, qualia, presence, intentionalism and authenticity. The discussion is informed by ideas from the work of philosophers and scholars such as Henk Borgdorff, Marcel Cobussen, Denis Dutton, Hans-Georg Gadamer, David Bentley Hart, Martin Heidegger and Simone Mahrenholz. A generic model is presented for a doctoral degree based on the notion of ‘music as research’.