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Hypebot Rewind: Where You Make Music Matters

As part of Hypebot's 5th Anniversary, I'm republishing a few of our favorite articles. This recent post postulated that even in a digitally connected world where you make music still matters. It reminds us of the importance of human contact and local scenes to creativity. Both are issues that I believe don't get enough attention.

music & the entertainment economy

I've written before about how where you make music may matter more than you'd think it might in a globally connected world. It's not just the size of the music industry where an artist as located  that matters. In fact, more important appears to be the size of the music scene measured by both the number of musicians and fans.  They both provide the feedback that helps an artist create better music; and great music is where it all begins.

Two charts from Richard Florida's Music & The Entertainment Economy Project at the University of Toronto's Rotman School Of Management illustrate the point. The first looks at the size of various music scenes as measured by the number of artists on MySpace.

Florida Top 20 Cities

When looking at the number of fans that bands based in certain cities have, the rankings shift.

Note that this is where the bands are; not where the fans live.

Florida total_fans_ranks600 

Should every band move to one of these top 20 cities as quickly as possible?  Probably not.  Too much competition can kill a project as quickly as too little can; and other factors like the kind of music you play should be factored in. For example, the fans and other musicians that you'll find in Nashville are quite different than in Portland, Oregon. So taking a criticial look around  and assessing the potential for creative and fan support makes sense. Then take action to build your aritst or label's community/scene/tribe via networking, the net, UHaul or whatever means available. – Bruce Houghton

MORE READING: Music & The Creative Class

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1 Comment

  1. This reminds me, as Hypebot articles often do, of the need for open data in 2009. Those charts are only posted because it’s the only data you’ve got, right? Or at least the only data you want to share, since I would think Skyline keeps more accurate numbers…maybe you don’t have to, I dunno.
    I recently did an article trying to dig into as many data sources as I could to answer my Big Questions about the state of hip hop in 2009. I rapidly discovered that 90% of my workload wasn’t going through data — it was spending hours trying to glean data. Most of the numbers are behind paywalls…whether it’s Neilsen’s Soundscan racket or some marketing research firm selling PDF documents for $700.
    The music industry is clearly still build on leveraging disinformation. The only reason the hip hop myth about “all album sales being white kids in the burs” can still exist is because there are no publicly available numbers to contradict it.
    Of course, I’m not a bitter hippie and I don’t expect this to change. Keeping secrets and selling data is good business with high margins and that’s why artists will remain in the dark indefinitely.

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