#SaveMusicRow I found it! The #Epicenter of the #NewMusicBusiness. It’s right there in my backyard. It’s probably in your backyard, too. Or your front yard. Or your basement or garage. Though it may not be as prominently marked…
My friend Mark Montgomery likes to boost Nashville as “The Epicenter of The New Music Business.” I appreciate the sentiment in that designation and don’t disagree at all with its intent. From the standpoint of pure creative energy, I think it’s entirely arguable that there is not another city on the planet that has the concentration of pure musical talent that Nashville has.
But I think that on some fundamental level the whole idea of a “New Music Business” is one that has no actual “center.”
What digital technology has done is diffuse the “center” of all cultural creation. In music in popular and/or “roots” music in particular, there are “centers” all over the country and the world.
To try to find the “epicenter” of the new music business is to see it through a rear-view mirror. The business used to be centered in a few places. In the US, in particular, it was New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville. And in Nashville it was “centered” around Music Row.
But digital technology has obviated the need for there to be any one “center.’ Now the center is everywhere, and music belongs to all of us again.