Here’s a new research note on music clusters. We’re busily at work with Kevin Stolarick on a much bigger piece with tracks trends in the location of employed musicians, self-employed musicians and music industry firms (esp. in the recorded music industry) since 1970. We’d very much appreciate comments on this work as it evolves.
One thing that strikes me is that a music cluster is sort of like an innovation cluster, but without a university as an anchor or hub institution. In a music cluster, I am coming to believe, there is no hub institution, save for the players (artistic and commercial) themselves or the networks among those players.
February 18th, 2008 at 9:43 am
I look forward to your analysis of scenes in Canada. This paper was based on working musicians, not necessarily recording artists, although some of them must have been included.
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.
February 18th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Very interesting. I think al mair makes an excellent point about the importance of labels. I don’t know if these serve as anchors, or merely as a conduit for networks. Anecdotally, even though there is no large university anchor to the music scene in Nashville, the MBA/Music program at Belmont University seems to serve somewhat as a professional hub for the non-talent segment of the local music industry.
February 19th, 2008 at 6:06 am
A couple of points-
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.