My colleague Dan Silver crunches the numbers and finds that while Nashville may be at the top of the commercial music pyramid, it lags on genre diversity.
Nashville takes fifth place in terms of popularity of its acts, according to Silver’s analysis of MySpace fans, behind L.A., Manhattan, Chicago, and Atlanta, and just ahead of Brooklyn. It falls to 25th in terms of total (MySpace) acts behind Portland, Austin, and Miami, not to mention leaders like L.A., Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Chicago.
Nashville also lags in the diversity of its music mix, according to Silver. Not surprisingly, it’s way out in front on country with 1,800 (MySpace) bands with five times as many as second-place San Antonio. Nashville also makes the top 20 for Christian music, acoustic, pop, rock, folk, jazz, and indie.
Silver provides further evidence of what he dubs Nashville’s “intensive rather than extensive” music profile by ranking Nashville alongside L.A., NY, Chicago, Atlanta, and comparably sized Portland on MySpace’s “bands with fans” metric (see table below).
Nashville is the national leader in Country and Christian music, and has bands with the top 10 most fans in folk, acoustic, acapella, pop, rock, punk, jazz, and alternative. This is very impressive indeed; Nashville is for sure a hit maker. But, once again, note the steep drop off. The other top 5 “bands with fans” cities – NY, L.A., Chicago, ATL — have high fan rankings across all the genres, with averages of 3, 7, 6, and 18. Nashville plunges to 40. Portland, by contrast, which ranks #19 overall on this metric (14 lower than Nashville), has an average fan rank across genres that is 14 higher than Nashville’s.
So yes, Nashville is more than country music. But, ranked in terms of the sheer cosmopolitan multiplicity of the genres its bands produce and circulate, Nashville is not quite New York City. Or, for that matter, Portland.
Still, Nashville’s music scene remains highly focused on the best-selling and most commercial of genres - pop (fourth), rock (sixth), and punk (sixth) as well as country (first), Christian (first) and folk (second) – compare to its 33rd place finish in Afrobeat and 151st place in death metal – as Silver’s data show.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Glad to see Puddletown ranked so high. No # 1’s, but a lot of different styles. I wonder how much this has to do with size of city. Portland is about the 25th largest metro area by population, New York #1, LA # 2, Chicago really up there. Of course, that should rank Nashville higher. And I’m surprised Portland’s not higher in Latin or Club, maybe the local bands don’t do Facebook.
This is definitely a 30-something list and misses some genres completely. There’s only one category for Jazz but several for hip-hop/rap and punk derivatives, two for metal for God’s sake. What about Blues, is it folk or jazz on this list? Portland’s annual 3-day blues festival draws tens of thousands to Waterfront Park. For that matter there are two annual Bluegrass festivals that draw big crowds, is it considered country or folk? And is the 2step here Texas 2-step or what (pardon my ignorance)?
And (arguably) Portland’s most popular band, Pink Martini, probably doesn’t fit any of these — lots of rhumba, but also Parisian cafe songs, big band, classical and many in different languages that I’m not sure how you’d classify.
May 29th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
The Table suggests there are great opportunities for artistic/creative (self-)promotion. For instance, Chicago is #17 for “Classical”. Does the “Development Department” of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra need a jolt?
May 30th, 2009 at 2:19 am
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June 2nd, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Can’t pass up the chance to post this review about Pink Martini’s show with the Oregon Symphony. We went last night and it was fabulous. The photo of China (singer), Thomas (Piano) and Carlos (conductor) with their arms all in the air is great.
http://www.oregonlive.com/performance/index.ssf/2009/06/pink_martini_makes_triumphant.html
And here’s the official website http://www.pinkmartini.com in case anyone wants to check out their music. Listen to at least 3 songs from different albums, they do a great variety. Maybe Amado Mio, Hey Eugene and Sympathique. If you like it, check their national tour and see if they’ll be near you this summer. Toronto (or whatever you are) check the Montreal jazz festival.
The band’s next local project after the symphony CD is touring the state with the Oregon Army National Guard band, doing showtunes from a Stan Freberg show about Oregon (for its 150th anniversary). This is the kind of thing a city with a great music scene produces. The number of bands is just quantity.
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:20 pm
This post seems to be just me commenting. But I’m wondering why divide NYC into Brooklyn & Manhattan, and what about the other boroughs? Is there no music in the Bronx or Queens? It didn’t cut LA into East LA, Hollywood, Santa Monica, Glendale, etc.
Is this some sort of reverse snobbism against Manhattan (all the really creative people moved to Brooklyn) or a California plot to put LA at #1, since including all of NYC would dominate the ratings?
June 8th, 2009 at 9:58 am
It’s how the MySpace data is formatted. Re-formatting it into metro areas is a possible next step. . .
July 7th, 2009 at 10:46 am
[...] scene compared with say Brooklyn, according to analysis by my U of T colleague Dan Silver. In an earlier post, I explored Jack White’s move from Detroit to the Music City. Silver picks up on the Punch [...]
October 23rd, 2010 at 4:52 pm
If you listen to Attack Attacks new album, there are a few similarities. Check out Track 8 and you will see. Youtube it.