Where does the music industry live today, anyway? The simple response is 'everywhere,' because creation, innovation, and promotion can happen anywhere, anytime. But ultimately that answer is too simple, too digitally utopian. After all, great music demands great marketing, and careers require access to media outlets, contacts, communities, tours, and connections to scenes.
Turns out that location still matters after all, but which locations matter the most? That's a tough question, but when it comes to the music industry, we looked internally to find the largest, densest industry populations. Accordingly, we tracked IP addresses on Google Analytics (anonymously) for the past one million uniques, and found that incredibly dense hubs still exist in New York, Los Angeles, London, San Francisco (& Oakland), Nashville, and Boston, among others. Here's the traffic ranking.
1. New York (12.23 % of the past 1MM uniques)
2. Los Angeles (10.43%)
3. London (3.55%)
4. San Francisco (and Oakland) (3.24%)
5. Nashville (1.55%)
6. Boston (& Cambridge) (1.55%)
7. Chicago (1.44%)
8. Seattle (1.22%)
9. Toronto (1.16%)
10. Atlanta (0.96%)
11. Paris (0.85%)
11. Austin (0.84%)
12. Birmingham (UK) (0.81%)
13. Washington, DC (0.78%)
14. Sydney (0.72%)
15. Philadelphia (0.72%)
Granted, this tilts towards English-speaking cities, but several non-English cities also popped up. And close behind? Miami, Gainesville, Denver, San Diego, Vancouver, Melbourne, and Stockholm were also well-represented...
Comments Closed
@juliomuniz Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Julio Muniz
Let's move...
@amykross Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Amy Ross
Austin #11...
@johnpstrohm Wednesday, May 25, 2011
John P. Strohm
Yay Birmingham! Oh...never mind.
@talk2tori Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Tori B
NYC is #1 of course!!
@Moush_tastic Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Ashley_Eckard
wow impressive Denver got an honorable mention
@BASSfestival Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Bass Festival 2011
Big up Birmingham! HEAVY!
@johnmostyn Wednesday, May 25, 2011
johnmostyn
Go Birmingham!
NienJaMusic Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Looks like there's an important country on the map as well: go Netherlands!
@MusicalUrbanism Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Musical Urbanism
#12: Birmingham?
@helgahenry Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Helga Henry
Go Bham!
@steveparkersmg Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Steve Parker
Really interesting. London 3rd, Birmingham 12th.
CTyankee Wednesday, May 25, 2011
What does this show us? If you are really serious about your career you need to be in communities dense with influencers, clubs/venues and audiences, and you at least need to tour those locations.
@mishhky Wednesday, May 25, 2011
michelle lima
lalaalaaaLAND número2!
The Insider Wednesday, May 25, 2011
PR, is data source DMN website stats? Thanks
presnikoff Wednesday, May 25, 2011
The answer is yes, this is internal data. If I can anticipate the next question - why did we approach it like this - the thinking was that we have fairly strong saturation within the music industry, and have easy access to our own site logs. So we were curious as to where everyone was coming from. Is it spread around, densely concentrated in a few cities, etc.? We had a pretty good working knowledge, but nothing this granular. So, this shows us that there are very dense clusters of industry folk, more than I expected.
This isn't everyone: we have large email, Twitter and RSS populations whose IP addresses we are not recording, though I think the last 1MM uniques on digitalmusicnews.com offers a fairly good proxy.
/pr
The Insider Wednesday, May 25, 2011
PR, thanks for the reply. However, this article is more a depiction of where DMN's readers and site visitors come from, than where the most important music industry cities are located per se. In the context of the article, the # of DMN's readers and site vistors are assumed to portray/correlate with a city's level of music industry importance. Wow. The industry itself is comprised of several small parts which together make up the whole. Ironically, 2 of the biggest music industry markets in the world, Germany and Japan, are not represented in the Top 20. Are cities such as Berlin and Tokyo not to be viewed not important as compared to and LA or NY? The importance of a city within a particular industry is based on many things but the number of website visitors is NOT one of them.
Hank Preston Thursday, May 26, 2011
My thoughts *exactly.*
"My band is huge in Japan." Therefore, Japan is where most music fans are.
Correlation does not imply causation. The conclusions of this article are irrelevant.
Maxwellian Thursday, May 26, 2011
This isn't the db of some band, it's for a major industry blog. Huge difference in audience. I see the bias being more language based, as in who in Tokyo can read this.
@jsunder Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Joseph Sunder
Glad I live in NYC
@lifeonhorizon Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Life On The Horizon
Philly is last on this list but it's still on it!!
@panicstlawyer Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Jay Hornack
No Manchester UK or Portland OR?
@Sonicbids Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Sonicbids
@MusicDrivesUs Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Music Drives Us
Nice! Well done :D
mrone50one Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Shout out to #617
Suzanne Lainson Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Doesn't this represent to a significant degree the number of people living in those areas? The bigger cities SHOULD contribute more visitors to your site than the smaller cities. It would be interesting to compare numbers of unique visitors as a percentage of population.
presnikoff Wednesday, May 25, 2011
I'd say yes and no. Part of the objective was to determine the biggest, densest cities for the music industry. And, get a sense for what those proportions are. Of course, New York is the largest city in the US, though it also has a tremendous amount of music. But more importantly, this measures people dialed into the industry side, which is the type of person reading us.
Anyway, I was a little surprised there wasn't a greater spread among the various cities, broader populations notwithstanding.
I think the 'pound for pound' comparison has some limited use. For example, a concentrated but small community can certainly help to launch careers, scenes, groups of labels, etc. But depending on the objective, a massive market like Los Angeles could be better for scaling an artist, launching an executive career, finding lots of different types of music companies, etc.
/pr
@justinlevenson Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wondering what data mapping software that is....any suggestions on good vendors in this space?
@midwestmusic Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Midwest Music Found
No real shockers here ...
@Michelle_Owen Thursday, May 26, 2011
Michelle Owen
but where is Berlin?
@worldaround Thursday, May 26, 2011
Pretty shallow methodology but still "interesting"
jstyll Thursday, May 26, 2011
Interesting study from a couple of years ago, seemingly with a "Northern" bias, but taken from the perspective of per capita population of music industry and creatives in residence.
http://www.creativeclass.com/creative_class/2009/11/12/music-cities-of-north-america/
@paulclabourne Thursday, May 26, 2011
Paul
My departure is inevitable. NYC?
@mrhaarsma Thursday, May 26, 2011
Mike Haarsma
1 down, 14 to go
Ms. T Thursday, May 26, 2011
Atlanta is the premiere city for Black music genres; AND it has a vibrant music tech scene. Interesting it didn't rank higher.
And how a list of the most important cities in the music business today in 2011 doesn't include Tokyo is beyond me!!
@chriscollie Thursday, May 26, 2011
Chris Collie
This will change...
Kevin V Thursday, May 26, 2011
Was a formula used to make up for the difference in population between cities? Like obviously a high percent of the population in Austin must be trafficing these sites to place so highly for a city of its small size in comparison to some of the other cities on this list.
I would expect Austin to score higher than Boston, but perhaps Bostons vicinity to NYC and all the big universities in the area played a role in its placement on the list. As well as its larger population.
@MadalynSklar Thursday, May 26, 2011
Madalyn Sklar
Interesting.
@JenGuyre Thursday, May 26, 2011
Jen Guyre
I moved from the #1 city in the music industry to the #4... sounds like a challenge!
@risekevin Thursday, May 26, 2011
Kevin Vasconcellos
A bit surprised that Boston appears so far above Austin
@SoTrippy Thursday, May 26, 2011
Bab Adetiba
Dallas not on there *sigh
@IndustryEars Thursday, May 26, 2011
Paul Porter
Where it happens...
@1BDG Thursday, May 26, 2011
Bruno1
AS USUAL, NO MIAMI! NOTHING NEW!
@_ABCMusic Thursday, May 26, 2011
ABC Music
Sydney #14! 3rd place outside the USA
@SincerelyJane Friday, May 27, 2011
Sad how New Orleans isn't even mentioned despite it's role in shaping Rock-n-Roll. It failed to monetize music effectively enough to still be relevant.
New Orleans: A Music Capital Without the Capital (http://goo.gl/lMTSs)
@emwizzle Friday, May 27, 2011
Emily White
love you, NYC...
@DJDangerVenture Friday, May 27, 2011
Michael Chouinard
decisions decisions
@MelodyVonRock Friday, May 27, 2011
Melody von Rock
pffft, they may be 'important' but Melbourne is 'best' ;-)
@Lady_94117 Friday, May 27, 2011
Miki Richmond
Wow surprising! The challenge is how to use that to grow your fans in those Cities... hey any advice on how to grow fans virally in places you can't physically reach yet?
@AlissaHolly Friday, May 27, 2011
Alissa Cronau
Syd is the 14th most important city in the music industry - not sure what it says about the industry
Chris Terry Friday, May 27, 2011
If there is a single dot on india.. i guess it should be just a.rahman.. the jai ho guy!
@777Beats Saturday, May 28, 2011
Thats right... NY #1
@mbrinkerhoff Saturday, May 28, 2011
Mark Brinkerhoff
Stay brassy, San Diego...
@chemicalrecords Monday, May 30, 2011
Daniel W. Hill
Wanna be the biggest
ya gotta know how big you gotta get!
@DjWim Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Where's Montreal?
@AffixMusic Thursday, June 02, 2011
Affix Music
I'm not sure that google clicks is the best measure for the size of a sector, but nice to see the A in the top 10
@SativaBella Thursday, June 02, 2011
Monika Runstrom
I cannot believe that Philly and DC beat Denver in this list
ak47 Friday, June 24, 2011
lol @ washington, dc...worst town ever.
@JimmyTucan Sunday, July 10, 2011
Jimmy Tucan
this is interesting...
evan@eatnoise.com Sunday, July 10, 2011
Strange Sydney is listed, but not Melbourne ... anyone in Australia knows that Melbourne has the most active scenes in Australia. Even Sydneysiders ... including myself! I've lived in both cities, and Melbourne's scene kicks Sydney's arse.
Well done Melbourne.
How was this list compiled, anyway?
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