I was just in Nashville and it felt like Hollywood or NYC, where people get off the bus to make their artistic fortune. Also, a friend of mine who LOVES karaoke was annoyed to find the quality of karaoke talent much higher in Nashville than in Boston …
Two:
[P]eople come to Nashville with dreams to play music, to write music, or to make it in the industry. Nashville also has a major school of music and a major symphony orchestra and a lot of non-country music. Plus it’s warmer, and chiller, and less expensive than NYC.
Three:
Having lived in Nashville for the last 10 years, I can tell you that the staff at Waffle House can do better than more than many top 40 artists. There is something to be said about having that many musicians in one place at one time… There are few things more annoying than to go some other town (e.g. NYC or Boston) and listen to a bad band. You forget where you’re from until you listen to a bad band. It doesn’t happen in Nashville. Like. Ever.
A new British study finds that the most pirated pop songs on the internet are those that already top the charts. Instead of giving rise to a “long tail” where small indie acts broaden their appeal online, the study found that digital technology – and music pirating – simply work to reinforce the fat head of mass appeal. From the BBC’s summary:
There was little evidence that file-sharing sites helped unsigned and new bands find an audience … It suggests file-sharing sites are becoming an alternative broadcast network comparable to radio stations as a way of hearing music.
This shouldn’t be a surprise ever since the 2006 Columbia University study that showed pretty convincingly that popularity tends to breed popularity whether on the Internet or not: When facing a big list of music, even if you have sampled each song, most people are apt to decide that the best ones are the ones other people also like …
It’s also notable that the Big Champagne study found that most people followed this pattern because otherwise they were overwhelmed by choice (you’ve probably run across Barry Schwartz on that paradox).
What’s more the ensuing exchange of information and opinion is the primary way that these choices become meaningful. A s one of the researchers, Andrew Bud, told The Register: “… it’s through people chatting to each other and seeing the music talked about in the media. That’s what culture is.”
The company sponsors art shows nationwide — its Scion Space in Culver City has shown countless A-list L.A. artists — and it works with hip-hop heavyweights like Ghostface, DJ Premier and Jazzy Jeff. And, recently, it’s started recruiting rising stars of the L.A. music scene to help sell cars. DJ duo L.A. Riots and IHeartComix impresario Franki Chan have both contributed to the Scion CD Sampler series, which has previously featured Flosstradamus and Spank Rock’s Ronnie Darko, among others.
Money quote:
“You’re not gonna see my music anywhere near an Ed Hardy commercial,” laughs L.A. Riots’ Daniel LeDisko on the phone from New York. “There are certain things that would take away our street cred.”
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney elaborates in the Financial Times noting the shift from the shredding solos of Hendrix, Clapton, Page, and Beck to the “shimmering” contextual tones of U2’s Edge or Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead. What about Jack White?
Universal Music Group, the world’s largest recorded music company, is once again trying to adapt to the new world of digital music. It’s created a new venture named Vevo in partnership with Google, according to the Wall Street Journal. Vevo aims to generate increased advertising revenue from streaming music videos.
But the enormity of the creative destruction sweeping the industry goes far beyond the iPod killing off the CD. The Gang of Four’s Dave Allen argues that we are seeing the “end of the album” – a construct initially created by the limitation of vinyl technology in 1930 – as the organizing principle of musical production. He sees this as potentially liberating for musicians – or those musicians that can adapt. Industry veteran Bob Lefsetz predicts a return to the pre-LP era, when artists constantly pumped out singles and toured. He even draws a comparison to the way that Toyota has succeeded by building a reputation for reliability gradually through word of mouth.
But not all the results are positive. Mark Fisher counters that the ubiquity of digital recording is again changing the way we experience music. As more and more people produce their own music, and with more music to consume online and elsewhere, we have less time to actually experience music. We now take our music in small bits, seldom listen to anything “whole,” and have precious little time left over for live events. Like a digital-age Walter Benjamin, Fisher argues that such instantaneous exposure deprives cultures of the time and space they need to germinate and grow.
Technology and music have long interacted as economist Peter Tschmuck has shown. On the one hand, new technologies like the long play (LP) record, the synthesizer, and now the iPod have changed the music industry and led to the rise of whole new music genres. But, on the other hand, music has also powerfully affected the rise and dissemination of new technology. Without music and some ingenious entrepreneurs in the music industry, the phonograph would still be used as Edison intended: to dictate letters and store phone calls. Radio was seen as a “wireless telegraph” until one of Thomas Edison’s researchers broadcast himself playing O Holy Night on the violin on Christmas Eve 1906. And we’re all familiar with the way the MP3 popularized peer-to-peer file-sharing and broadband internet connections. But, It’s about more than just technology, actually.
The way I see it, that music is a “fruit-fly industry” – one that can tell us a lot about the nature of technology, new business models, and the economy in general. Music is a highly competitive business – a hyper-competitive market in miniature, where competition for sonic, technological, and talent advantage spurs rapid evolution and change. New recording and network technology means that barriers to entry are lower than ever. Music is often the first sector to experience the full force of disruptive technology. It was the first industry to face the file-sharing crisis, and other industries like film and publishing are now learning from its experience. Musicians are quintessential examples of free-agent workers, mixing income and seeking out affordable, creative places to do their work. And the concentration of musical talent and firms into clusters and scenes – in an industry which requires little in the way of capital infrastructure and fixed costs – can help us better understand geographic clustering across a wide variety of fields.
Two members of rock-n-roll royalty are getting married. A couple of weeks ago, news broke that White Stripes drummer Meg White and guitarist Jackson Smith (son of legendary MC5 founder the late Fred “Sonic” Smith and singer-songwriter Patti Smith) plan to tie the knot later this month. While both are born-and-bred products of Detroit’s legendary music scene, their nuptials will take place 500 miles south in Nashville, Tennessee.
A few years ago, Meg’s ex-husband and current bandmate Jack White made the move from Detroit to Nashville. Inspired by his time there producing Loretta Lynn’s Van Lear Rose and the city’s warm embrace of those who aim to “write hits,” Jack White now lives there full-time with his family, and his new side project: The Dead Weather is based out of his new multi-purpose headquarters in the city.
The White’s trips down I-75 are part of a broader trend. While conventional wisdom holds that modern technology allows musicians to work from anywhere they choose (while weakening the influence of traditional record labels and rights-management organizations), the reality is music, like many other industries, is actually becoming more concentrated and clustered over time.
In 1970, Nashville was a minor center focused on country music. By 2004, only New York and L.A. boasted more musicians. The extent of its growth was so significant that when my research team and I charted the geographic centers of the music industry from 1970 and 2004 using a metric called a location quotient, Nashville was the only city that registered positive growth. In effect, it sucked up all the growth in the music industry.
While Nashville may not possess the size and scale of New York City, the celebrity-making allure of L.A., the top-40 hit-making appeal of Atlanta, or even the critical cachet of Austin or Montreal, across many genres it possesses the world’s best writing and studio talent and the best recording infrastructure. Today, it’s home to over 180 recording studios, 130 music publishers, 100 live music clubs, and 80 record labels. It’s turned into the Silicon Valley of the music business, combining the best institutions, the best infrastructure, and the best talent. And, like Silicon Valley’s broad reach across many high-tech fields from hardware to software, biotech to green energy, Nashville has become the center for multiple musical genres from country and gospel to rock and pop, attracting top talent from across the United States and the globe.
When Manhattan rents skyrocketed, creative energy moved out to Brooklyn in search of cheap(er) space. The New York Times reports on a Brooklyn apartment complex specifically for musicians.
When they bought the buildings 10 years ago, Ms. Hertz said, drug dealers were as thick as thieves, and the neighborhood had none of the creature comforts of nearby Park Slope. But the buildings sat right on Prospect Park and over a subway stop. The setting was perfect, in other words, for struggling artists who frequent Manhattan and like to play Frisbee.
One musician moved in, paid his rent on time and recommended another, who recommended another. Noise complaints paradoxically went down, Ms. Hertz said, and evictions did, too. … Word spread as fast as “The Flight of the Bumblebee.” At a time when cheap studios are in hot demand and other landlords want proof of steady work and a co-guarantor, Ms. Hertz mainly wants to know if you have friends inside and can carry a tune …
Today the stairwell railings are festooned with bikes, and the halls are alive with the sound of music. All told there are something like 40 musicians in the two buildings, an improvised community of creative souls who keep similar hours and share an impulse to jam.
Studios typically are 190 square feet, plus a kitchenette, a full bath, a small hallway and two or three closets … Generally, there’s a tacit no-music-after-10 policy, and any boom-chica-boom you hear before then can be considered a reminder to get back to work …
Two interestings things, aside from the tenants. One, this is a for-profit project. And two, it developed naturally and organically over time as was not part of any top-down initiative.
There’s lots of good music emerging out of the T-Dot urban music scene right now, which seems to be indicating something interesting about the city’s profile with respect to talent, at least in that scene. Toronto has a notoriously coarse urban music culture, known internationally as “The Screwface Capital” – in the analogue world, we used to get the music early from our cousins in New York and play it out just so that we could be over it first. We can’t wait to be apathetic about your music. Especially if the artist is out of the GTA. Something about that metabolism has always devoured artists from the area before they could break international ground. And yet within the last few weeks or so:
K’naan released his hotly anticipated album Troubadour yesterday:
And Zaki Ibrahim’s recent EP Eclectica (Episodes in Purple) has just received a Juno nomination for R&B / Soul Recording of the Year – she’s making noise in the UK and other places around the world as well:
So here’s a question: How many of these artists, each of whom has been experiencing great success abroad, and represents Toronto not only on their MySpace pages but also in their lyrics and music, were born in the GTA or even the province?
The answer: Only K-OS.
And while K-OS represents something of the “old guard,” one of the last monuments to the early 90s scene, K’naan, Drake, and Zaki Ibrahim are arguably some of the strongest talent cultivating some of the strongest international buzz out of the city. And they are all imports – K’naan from Somalia, Drake from Tennessee, and Zaki from… well… all over, starting with Vancouver.
While each represent the city in their own way, they are unapologetically hybrid – much like Toronto itself. These artists have been able to come to the city, call it home and find the right people, layers of connectivity, and industry infrastructure to launch their careers into the national/international stratosphere.
So what is it about Toronto’s music scene – at least the urban music scene – that international talent has found so enabling? Why has it seemed to be less kind to its “native” artists? Why haven’t we seen this kind of talent-spiking in Halifax, or Vancouver, or even Montreal? What is it about a city that gives it the capacity to not only attract and incubate such a diversity of talent, but the capacity to launch it as well?
I know there’s already enough music in this post, but here’s some more.
We lost a true original last weekend when Blossom Dearie died quietly at 84. She had a tiny voice and a determined presence. When no major label would sign her in the ‘70s she started her own Daffodil Records and sold vinyl out of her suitcase at concerts. I remember seeing her in a club years ago and her rule was no drinks could be served, nor anyone moving around the room, when she sang. She sang funny Dave Frishberg songs, showtunes, jazz standards, and the best rendition of Billy Strayhorn’s Lush Life I’ve ever heard. She said it took her 10 years to learn and she hit all the minor notes and sounded like the saddest barfly you’ve ever met, more convincing because she didn’t have Tom Wait’s gravely whisky voice.
Over at Economix, Princeton economist Alan Krueger weighs in on how to measure and evaluate the popularity or success of popular musicians.
To an economist, the most popular artist is the one who would sell the most tickets at a given price. That is, if all artists charged the same price, whoever would attract the largest audience would be the most popular. Likewise, the most popular author is the one who sells the most books at a given price. Demand is higher for some artists and authors than others.
But herein lies the rub: The price of concerts (and books) varies. If Bruce Springsteen charges a lower price than Madonna, his revenues may well be lower even if he draws more fans.
Only in the special case where an increase in price exactly offsets a reduction in the number of tickets sold would gross revenue measure the popularity of an artist. That is, if artist A sells 10 percent fewer tickets by charging 10 percent more, gross revenue could be used as a measure of popularity.
Another consideration is the number of concerts the performers are willing to supply. Celine Dion may have been willing to perform more shows than Bruce Springsteen, accounting for her higher revenues.
Finally, unlike book sales, concert fans cannot always buy a ticket at the list price. Ideally, the revenue collected in the secondary resale market — by scalpers, for example — should be included in the rankings of artists as well.
For those so inclined, a longish but very interesting paper on the subject with Marie Connolly is here.
