It’s been just over a decade since The New York Times published its controversial feature story declaring Nashville the nation’s new “It City,” and ever since that identity has been locked in a codependent frenemy relationship with our much older stature as Music City.

It City attracts 17 million tourists a year, lines its main nightlife street with celebrity-branded multiplexes and builds banal and boxy housing for thousands of new residents per month. Music City is where roots star Sierra Ferrell drops in for a late-night set at Jane’s Hideaway and where the TSU Marching Band wins a Grammy Award, and where guitar player Jack Silverman plays acid jazz in a cozy East Nashville parlor for a dozen people, something I was delighted to experience last month.

Is Nashville’s diversification and rapid growth ultimately compatible with the village-like, art-first ethos that’s made so many of us want to live and create here? That question has been debated in the cultural community for years, but less so in the halls of power, where decisions about zoning, development, arts funding and historic preservation are made.

Now though, in a double dose of civic analysis, two studies released in the second half of 2024 uncover important new data and put hard policy choices on the doorstep of the Metro Council and Mayor Freddie O’Connell. Meanwhile, a new fundraising festival for independent venues will take place next month, a sign of the sector continuing to take matters into its own hands.

Numbers tell the story

Carly Pearce, left, sings as fellow songwriters Pat Alger and Tony Arata pick during one the Bluebird Cafe’s famous “in the round” performances in 2018. While the Bluebird became world famous via a central role in the “Nashville” TV series, it’s still a working independent venue in a changing music industry landscape.

-- Photo By Ed Rode | Special To The Ledger

In June, a University of Pennsylvania group working on behalf of Nashville Metro Planning released a Nashville Independent Venues Study, a 160-page deep dive into the market conditions facing the live music spaces that have helped define Music City’s identity for locals and visitors alike. Then in September, the Austin-based consulting firm Sound Music Cities published the first Greater Nashville Music Census, a survey and broad-based focus group taking stock of who works in the industry, how they’re doing and what challenges they face.

The Music Census received responses from 4,200 professionals across a range of sectors, genres and job descriptions, record participation for the Sound Music Cities surveys by a factor of two. Eighty-five percent of respondents have more than 10 years’ experience in the industry, and anonymous quotes confirm Nashville remains dynamic, collaborative and inspiring. Authors concluded that “there are many professionals who are able to make their living from music, and while there are challenges, this (study) is an evolving and key part of Nashville to intentionally understand, sustain, and grow as one of the foremost music ecosystems.”

“There is a path for the dream to make good money in music here. And I don’t know that’s true in a lot of cities,” says Jamie Kent, a songwriter turned arts advocate and one of the architects of the census. It found, on this important point, that more than half of the respondents work in music full time and that their average income derived from music was $52,000 per year, while a substantial number, about 18%, earn more than $100,000 per year from music.

The more concerning (and unsurprising) findings indicated that creatives are hard-pressed by the cost of living, parking and housing, thus large numbers are choosing to live farther from the city core as a survival strategy. Still, music workers of all kinds are committed to staying in or near Nashville, with only 20% indicating they’re thinking about or planning to move.

“There are two ways to approach (inflation),” says Kent in the audio interview posted on WMOT.com. “You can try to find tax incentives to do that. They’re difficult here. We’ve been trying to explore them. Or you can provide grant support. If you can provide an artist with a $15,000 grant so that they can afford to record, maybe put toward a down payment on a house and stay here or toward rent? There’s kind of two approaches there. We’ve identified opportunities on both.”

Singer/songwriters perform as part the ongoing “Song Suffragettes” series at the Listening Room in 2022, highlighting female country music creators. Even with hundreds of independent music venues throughout the city, performers can sometimes struggle to find regular gigs as tastes, formats and expectations change.

-- Photo By Ed Rode | Special To The Ledger

The Census found a few other important hopes and proposals. Music professionals crave more forums to meet up, network and talk shop. Musicians in particular want relief from downtown’s expensive parking (progress is being made, says Kent). And venue owners want “regulatory tools that simplify and support their ability to host live music events, especially tax discounts, waivers and incentives.” There is also widespread desire, according to the survey, “to have an advocate within the government who acts as a dedicated liaison to navigate and champion their interests.”

Kent tells me that in fact, and to many people’s surprise, Nashville has a “Night Mayor” or, officially, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Nightlife, Benton McDonough (The Ledger profiled him in late 2023). “He’s working really hard, but he’s one guy, and he has I think a team of two or three,” says Kent. “He often gets kind of stuck in Broadway noise complaints, (and) making sure (it’s a safe environment), and it dominates a lot of the time. And so I think part of the issue is how do we serve the whole community?”

Shutdown’s lingering effects

The needs and hopes of venue owners are documented with even more specificity in the Independent Venues Study, which was ordered and funded by the Metro Council in 2021, when the harsh impacts of the COVID-19 shutdowns were acute.

PennPraxis, working with research consultancy VibeLab, won the bid and released a report that inventoried 112 dedicated music spaces (among 252 spaces that present music sometimes) and found that of those, 24 are fully independent music venues (IMVs), 40 are fully corporate owned, while 48 are hybrids that have partnerships with corporate promotion companies like LiveNation.

It also noted the important point that Nashville has one of the highest per capita concentrations of venues in the world, six times higher than New York or Tokyo for example.

“Study participants perceive that Metro government has been inattentive to the plight of IMVs and independent music actors, despite their importance in regional economy and culture.”

The study offers details about the cost and revenue centers for venues, as well as a look at all the indirect contributors and beneficiaries of venue operations in the music ecosystem, including real estate, song publishing, light and sound design and community radio.

Michael Fichman, associate professor of practice at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, and project lead for Penn Praxis, said in an interview last month that independent venues are the focus of the study because they’re more likely to give emerging and risk-taking artists a place to play. “One of the primary concerns that motivated the study was an increasing degree of corporatization in not just ownership of venues, but also operations, booking, management, things of this nature,” he said.

The survey report put it this way: “Costs are high and rising further, and it can be extremely difficult to make a profit. In addition to taking fewer chances on less-established artists or genres, some venues aim to reduce risk by either working with corporate partners, or locating further from the downtown core.”

While the Bluebird Cafe has the advantage of worldwide fame, venues outside the downtown corridor can sometimes struggle to attract music-curious visitors.

-- Shutterstock.Com

The COVID pandemic delivered a hammer blow to venues already struggling in an environment of rising real estate costs. The Music Venue Alliance Nashville, formed in 2017, stepped up to a new advocacy and protective role during the crisis. Some venues like Exit/In and the Mercy Lounge were unable to continue under their status quo management and went through ownership changes, though they are still in business. The experience ushered in new degrees of policy activism, and that’s reflected in the venue study’s findings: “Study participants perceive that Metro government has been inattentive to the plight of IMVs and independent music actors, despite their importance in regional economy and culture.”

Fichman told me about the need for a comprehensive and coordinated strategy to protect and nurture the IMV sector. “Our experience has taught us that – to use a musical analogy – if you want to play the score, you need somebody conducting the orchestra. It’s not really just about one actor,” he said. “The Metro government is certainly part of it, but the way Tennessee law works, they have limited powers, and that means that private sector partners need to participate as well in considering how live music is affected by almost every decision that gets made, whether you’re permitting an apartment building or you’re redeveloping elements of the transit system or you’re promoting a tourism campaign.”

Music fund a first step

One recent step forward, at least procedurally, was Tennessee legislation, signed last spring by Gov. Bill Lee, that created a Live Music Fund to potentially subsidize and support the challenged venue sector. Alas, no money was allocated to the fund, but it set in motion another study to assess what an effective budget would look like, and a first take was revealed last week.

“According to conservative calculations, the fund will need roughly $16.5 million in its first year to meet the mounting needs of independent venues, promoters and performers in Tennessee,” said MVAN president and former Exit/In proprietor Chris Cobb. “While this number might seem large, I can’t stress enough the great need for this, and how conservative our assessment truly is.”

Kent, founder of Backstage Strategies, a lobby firm for music, says the race is on to find money for the fund and that it’s not out of the realm of possibility that corporate venues and large entertainment corporations might see benefit in contributing. On Feb. 1, Nashville will play host to 615 Indie Live, a multi-genre club crawl featuring at least 40 acts in 13 independent music venues for a flat $15 fee. Proceeds will support MVAN.

Kent says while many respondents to the Nashville Census expressed concerns that the city has favored the tourism sector over local music-makers, the promotion agency Visit Music City is a co-sponsor of 615 Indie Live. “The goal here is to grow and highlight and celebrate our local music scene, because it’s something we all have a ton of pride in. And I think we’ve felt like it’s gotten lost in our reputation as a tourism city, and this is a way to kind of claim it back in partnership with tourism.”

With at least this one new source of funds and a vast new trove of information for policymakers, 2025 should be a year of more action than study. “I think momentum and intent are there,” Kent says. “I think we now need to be more focused. And I think that this data provides us the foundation to be focused.”