Events in Music
Album Release
Dec 5 Paul McCartney & Wings release album "Band on the Run" in the US

Paul McCartney
- Dec 7 Paul McCartney & Wings release "Band on the Run" in the UK
Film Premier
Dec 25 "The Sting" directed by George Roy Hill, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford and music inspired by Scott Joplin premieres in Los Angeles and New York (Best Picture 1974)
Birthdays in Music
- Dec 1 Jon Theodore, American musician
- Dec 4 Racci Shay, American musician, born in LaGrange, Georgia
- Dec 4 Ferry Corsten, Dutch musician and DJ, born in Rotterdam, Netherlands
- Dec 4 Kate Rusby, English folk singer and songwriter, born in Barnsley, England
- Dec 8 Corey Taylor, American singer (Slipknot, Stone Sour), born in Des Moines, Iowa
- Dec 11 Valentina Lisitsa, Ukrainian-American concert, pianist born in Kiev, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
- Dec 14 Tia Texada, American actress and singer, born in Louisiana
- Dec 16 Mariza [Marisa dos Reis Nunes], Portuguese fado singer, born in Maputo, Portuguese Mozambique
- Dec 21 Karmen Stavec, German-born Slovenian singer, born in West Berlin
- Dec 27 Kristoffer Zegers, Dutch composer
- Dec 28 Herborg Kråkevik, Norwegian singer and actress, born in Jondal, Norway
- Dec 31 Malcolm Middleton, Scottish musician (Arab Strap), born in Dumfries, United Kingdom
Deaths in Music
- Dec 3 Emile Christian, American jazz trombonist, dies at 78
- Dec 6 Justus Hermann Wetzel, composer, dies at 94
- Dec 14 Yitzhak Edel, Israeli composer, dies at 77
- Dec 15 Orest Alexandrovich Evlahkov, composer, dies at 61
- Dec 17 Patrick Hadley, composer, dies at 74
- Dec 18 Julio César Brero [or Giulio Cesare], Italian-born Argentine composer and lawyer (Novella), dies at 64
- Dec 20 Bobby Darin [Walden Robert Cassotto], American singer (Mack the Knife), dies of a heart attack at 37
- Dec 22 Domingo Julio Gomez Garcia, composer, dies at 87
- Dec 30 Henri-Paul Busser, composer, dies at 101