Jul. 14, 2010 - Issue #769: Musician’s Survival Guide

Enter Sandor

Track-tracking

Americans move towards more accurate music metrics

Yes, we can follow the gate receipts of major concert tours on Billboard. Sales of records are tracked. But what about the entire music industry as a whole?

For example, when a sports team tries to sell a community on the idea it needs a new arena, it will speak of its total economic benefit to the city in which it plays. Hotel stays, restaurant visits, souvenir sales, parking revenues. It all gets lumped in there.

But outside of tickets, merchandise and record sales, the record industry doesn't track itself with the same kind of fervour. What are the knock-on effects that a vibrant music community brings to the economy as a whole? So many things to consider—the rentals of rehearsal spaces to the renting of equipment for tour shows to paying the sound people, security and the roadies. There's the manufacturing of vinyl and CDs. Heck, gas and oil for the tour van.

And, with music sales continuing to slump, the bigger question: what is the overall cost of the music-industry slump to the economy?

A key part of the US 2010 Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement, a policy paper issued by the Obama administration in late June, is a promise that the government south of the border will try to figure out just how much intellectual-property producers, including the music biz, mean to the economy as a whole.

"Improved measures of intellectual property linked with measures of economic performance would help the US Government understand the role and breadth of intellectual property in the American economy and would inform policy and resource decisions related to intellectual property enforcement," states the report.

"Once that framework is established, ESA (Economics and Statistics Administration) will test the feasibility of developing improved intellectual property measures and, if those measures can be developed, they will be linked to measures of economic performance. The resulting analysis and datasets will then be made public."

Basically, the US government wants to figure out if there is a way to actually count the dollars that copyright holders bring to the economy. If their copyrights are better protected, just how much more will that mean to the economy? Will greater record sales lead to more ticket sales for bigger shows and longer tours? Will more online sales lead to more jobs for the people working in Internet-based businesses, or at least help Apple and Amazon's bottom lines? After all, they are American companies.

Now, the report does state that the American government wants to ramp up pressure on countries (including us here in Canada; the Americans have been flagging us as a piracy wasteland for a while now) that hurt US intellectual property providers, from medical researchers to musicians. But armed with a stat book filled with doom and gloom measured to the nearest cent, it's a lot easier to justify using the stick rather than the carrot.

Look, we all know that the spiraling auto industry has decimated Detroit, making it one of the fastest-shrinking cities in North America. But what does a shrinking music industry mean for US cities that depend so much on it, like Austin, Texas? In 2006, Belmont University and the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce did a study that found the music biz was worth US$6.38 billion to Music City, USA. But that's as good as we've got.

And will this mean that, down the road, maybe the Canadian government will get StatsCan on this?
The real big revelation, though, is that a report like this changes the way the government sees musicians. They aren't hobbyists with the rare exception who goes on to fame and fortune. A valuation of the music biz will show that there are way more out there than the public knows about who play to make a living, or as legitimate second jobs. V

Steven Sandor is a former editor-in-chief of Vue Weekly, now an editor and author living in Toronto. vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus