Music semiology, the semiology of music, is the study of music and musicology as symbols, their meaning, and their effects on human behaviour.
"There are strong arguments that music inhabits a semiological realm which, on both ontogenetic and phylogenetic levels, has developmental priority over verbal language." (Middleton 1990, p.172) See Nattiez (1976, 1987, 1989), Stefani (1973, 1986), Baroni (1983), and Semiotica (66: 1–3 (1987)).
Zoomusicology is often a subfield of zoosemiotics.