I understand the difficulty of database issues, but most musicians I know file their taxes for their day job, and keep the cash for their band money, so perhaps a qualitative adjunct to the research is necessary in order to capture the breadth and depth of a local scene.

I find this research fascinating as a first step, but would like to see a longitudinal perspective in order to understand how a scene evolves over time. The relationships between variables at different points in time would be interesting.

One point I would like to make is that when a scene starts to develop, the difference between a small scene and an exploding scene is the existence of a way of getting up to a national scene. Most US cities whose scenes exploded had one or more local labels that helped get national exposure for local artists…Subpop/Seattle, Mammoth and Merge/N. Carolina, etc. If not a locally based label, it could be a retailer…Waterloo/Austin, or a management company…Creed/Tallahassee or Lou Pearlman and all the Orlando artists (NSync, Britney, etc.)

In Canada, we have three continually exploding scenes…Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal are our equivalent to NYC, LA and Chicago or Nashville. Most, but not all, activity in Montreal is Francophone, but English speaking artists such as Arcade Fire and Patrick Watson came out of Montreal. Most Montreal or PQ artists record for locally based independent labels. Toronto always has a variety of scenes, based on musical genres. We have dozens of indie labels that have adequate or better marketing and distribution, as well as the Canadian head offices of all four multinationals. Although they directly sign very few artists, they are always looking to get distribution rights for Canada through an indie label. Universal probably distributes 60 indie labels, and the other three majors also have substantial rosters of indie labels. Vancouver is dominated by major management companies…Bruce Allen/Michael Buble, Anne Murray, Martina McBride…Sam Feldman/Norah Jones, Joni Mitchell, The Chieftains, Tragically Hip and Nettwerk/Avril Lavigne, Sum 41, Bare Naked Ladies, etc. Nettwerk is the largest indie label in Vancouver, although it doesn’t actually sign many artists. There are other indie labels of consequence in Vancouver in sub genres of music.