A report on the music industry in Chicago

Authors: Lawrence Rothfield, Don Coursey, Sarah Lee, Daniel Silver and Wendy Norris

Study link: http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/08/pdf/080122.music.pdf

Considered simply in terms of the jobs it provides, the businesses it includes, the payroll it generates, and the job growth it spurs, the music industry turns out to be an important component of the overall economy of Chicago (and of other cities as well). But these ways of looking at the music industry capture only part of its contribution to the economy of a city. At least as significant, we believe, is the role that music plays in enticing music-lovers to visit and even relocate to a city with a vibrant live music scene. With competition for tourist dollars increasingly fierce, and with urban developers and planners increasingly aware of the need to woo the “creative class” 2 by investing in amenities that improve the quality of life, what goes on in local music clubs, ballrooms, large auditoriums, festivals, and even basements and garages is important to the future of cities. While it seems obvious that some cities suffer from dull live music scenes while others can boast of hot ones, capturing that difference in numbers is no easy task. To begin to measure and compare the strength of live music scenes across the United States, we have developed an innovative set of metrics. Pulling together information from various data sources about concerts performed, tickets sold, record sales and critical rankings of artists, the size and musical focus of venues, and even the number of unsigned bands, we are able to show how cities vary in the supply, popular appeal, critical recognition, variety, availability, and affordability of live music. What emerges from the combination of industrial and “scene” statistics is a multi-dimensional profile of the music business in fifty different metropolitan areas around the country in 2004, with Chicago as the central focus.3 We also benchmark Chicago against a smaller comparison group of eleven cities, consisting of its demographic peers (Los Angeles and New York), along with a set of other cities that either have produced economic impact studies of their own music industries (Seattle, Austin, Nashville, Atlanta), stand out as particularly strong in several dimensions of performance (Boston, Las Vegas), or possess strong musical traditions (New Orleans, Memphis).

Category: Economy