Wednesday, August 10, 2022 by Chad Swiatecki
Austin’s second attempt to use a music census to gather data on the state of local musicians and the creative economy is underway. The team conducting the census hopes to use lessons from the 2015 version, as well as findings from studies in other cities, to make the data more useful to policymakers and stakeholder groups.
The data-rich final product of the latest census process showed the dire economic realities facing local working musicians, nearly a third of whom earned less than $15,000 a year as the city’s cost of living climbed. That and other data were used as part of the reasoning behind the city’s creative ecosystem omnibus resolution in 2016, which collected 25 broad goals and many more subtasks for city staff to accomplish, most of which have stalled or remained incomplete for six years afterwards.
Those responsible for the 2022 census say the goal is to present results to the community at large, so that City Hall, as well as community groups and nonprofit organizations, can use the data to start discussions and find goals that can be addressed externally. of government involvement.
Don Pitts, president of Sound Music Cities and the former head of Austin’s Music and Entertainment Division, said he hopes the data collected from thousands of local musicians and music business professionals in the greater Austin area will spur progress on programming and initiatives made after the 2015 report by groups such as the Austin Music Foundation and the Healthy Alliance for Austin Musicians.
The census, which was originally scheduled to close on August 15, is likely to be extended until September to allow for more input.
Since moving into the private sector, Pitts and his colleagues have worked as musical and sound policy consultants for cities such as Washington, Pittsburgh and Sacramento, and adapted their approach to make the process and data collected more efficient.
“It provides a road map for music communities that are inherently siled and fragmented,” he said, noting that the findings will be presented later this year in infographics and other “bite-sized” formats to enable easier sharing among interested groups.
“The trend we’ve seen is cities like Sacramento want to use it for regulatory reform because they’re over-regulated and that’s preventing a lot of music stuff from happening.”
Megan Van Voorhis is a creative economy manager for Sacramento, which is currently undergoing its own music census. She said Sacramento is looking for more hard data about the local music economy and the realities facing musicians, promoters and music companies around issues like temporary pop-up events and live music licensing.
“It was pretty clear that we lacked good information about the current state of the music community because that infrastructure didn’t exist here,” she said. “One piece of my job is to look at the regulatory side, and when we talked to the community here about how they’re doing in the pandemic, people wanted to talk about the live music climate from a regulatory perspective.”
Van Voorhis hopes the census, which begins next month, will help her and other city leaders determine whether anecdotal complaints about concerns like a lack of medium-sized music venues in Sacramento are part of a larger problem that needs political attention to address zoning. , noise or other regulatory issues.
In Huntsville, Alabama, a music review completed in 2019 by the Sound Diplomacy consulting group serves as the primary playbook that helped the city attract a new $50 million amphitheater, and is used to shape policy related to the expansion of entertainment districts across the whole city city
Matt Mandrella, Huntsville’s music official, said more policy moves sparked by the review are expected next year, with political and economic leaders using the data to demonstrate the ability of live music and the creative sector to attract highly skilled workers. In fact, Mandrella said the goal is for the region known as Rocket City, where Boeing and other aerospace players dominate the local economy, to join Austin and Nashville as one of the nation’s top music-friendly metros.
“Where the civic community really came in was with the economic piece, where the data comes in that shows how much music and entertainment can be an economic driver for the city, and also how it can be a quality of life initiative,” he said. “Not only does a dynamic live music environment make Huntsville a stronger city for musicians, but it’s also a strength for other industries because we’re a city with more Ph.D.s than any other place in the country.”
Photo by Ron Baker, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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