Music & the Entertainment Economy

Last week, Tyler Cowen asked: “What are the least bohemian cities in the world?”  He went on to wonder whether Richard Florida had some kind of bohemian index. Richard, of course, does.  It measures the concentration of professional artists living in each U.S. and Canadian metro area.  Or, at least, the concentration of people who [...]

This post was co-authored with Ian Swain In his Economix column earlier this month, Edward Glaeser discussed the economic outlook for Atlanta.  He was generally optimistic, using some of the economic geographer’s standard tools in his analysis: Atlanta is its region’s largest urban agglomeration, its politics are pro-business, and a high percentage of its population [...]

Aaron Renn, the Urbanophile, has a brilliant post about how Detroit could embrace its industrial ruins.  I agree with just about everything he says in it.  Here are the key ideas: What if instead of spending a huge amount of money to try to save one building, the city found a little bit of money [...]

Wired Magazine had a very interesting article about more bad news for the record companies.  A copyright ticking time bomb is set to explode on them in 2013. Basically, the 1975 Copyright Act states that all copyrights granted after 1978 revert back to their original owners after 35 years, with some marginal cases excepted.  This [...]

One of our preoccupations here concerns the relations between music and the ambiance of a place.  Also, the constellations of people, businesses, networks, and practices that make a scene.  You couldn’t find a better window into those topics than a recent documentary about Toronto’s worlds of music, City Sonic. City Sonic is an online collection [...]

Mariah Carey a genius of the new music economy? That is the impression one gets from an article in the Times of London.  The article describes how Carey’s new album is more or less being sponsored by Elle Magazine, outside the record company system.  Buyers of Mariah’s new album will receive a special edition of [...]