Steps to a Stronger Music Community

Mike Mellor ~ Editor, The Killing Floor, Guest Blogger

On my blog The Killing Floor, the guest writers, commenters and I spend a good deal of time discussing the state of the local music scene.

We all agree that these are difficult times for anybody trying to make a career in the music business. Performers, venue managers, booking agents and promoters are all locked in a vicious cycle that forces each of them to look out for their own immediate individual survival, often at the expense of the long-term stability of the community.

The problem starts with the chicken-and-egg quandary where music fans are going out considerably less often because venues don’t present as much upper-tier music as they used to, while venues don’t showcase as much upper-tier music because fans are going out considerably less often than they used to.

Less fan revenue for the venue means that they can’t hire the upper-tier acts, local or touring. This then means that promoters can’t raise the necessary money to put their acts on tour, which means local artists can’t get exposed to new audiences and local audiences can’t get exposed to new artists.

Ultimately music fans are fed heaping helpings of the same music until they stop going out, which completes the cycle and sends the community for another go round on the downward spiral.

There is a lot of talk in our circles about coming together and showing community solidarity. There are a lot of rallying cries like, “I Support Local Music in Massachusetts,” and, “We Care About Music!” We all seem to fundamentally understand that our music culture is imperiled and that group action is needed to save it.

But until we construct and implement some social, economic and communication strategies all of this passion will be wasted. 7,000 fans on Facebook may show how many people love local music and are concerned for its future, but it alone doesn’t generate a single dollar or affect a change on the system. We need a number of concrete initiatives to generate the money and critical mass needed to change the local scene’s business culture. I will propose one such idea now.

There ought to be a group that essentially acts like a music fan’s union. We will assert as a group that we want the following out of our local music providers:

1. Opportunities for local musicians to play gigs for amounts of money that make it worth their time and skill

2. Opportunities for those same musicians to find local bookings for peer bands from other locales

3. More shows from national touring acts with established local acts as their bill partners

This provides fans with more access to better music and musicians with more leverage to promote themselves and be solid contributors to the larger national music scene. Of course, providing all of this is a substantial risk for venue managers and promoters, so we as consumers need to step up and take care of our responsibilities by:

1. Pledging to regularly patronize the venues that work with us to build the music community we demand

2. Establish social networks and citizen journalism ventures to promote these venues and events beyond our immediate community

3. Volunteer our time, effort and expertise (and perhaps money) to reduce the overhead and financial risk the venues and promoters take on to produce the kinds of events we want.

There is a couplet in the song “Hesitation Blues” that goes, “The eagle on the dollar says, ‘In God we trust’ / Woman says she wants a man, but wants to see a dollar first.” This is essentially the predicament we are in right now as music fans. No businessperson would be fool enough to risk the bottom line for us if we can’t demonstrate the potential for profit. We shouldn’t be fool enough to think we can get a better music scene without dedicating and sacrificing a little bit of ourselves.

We can shout from up on high about how we think our music community should be, but if we want to affect real change we need to consolidate our power and resources to act as a good faith partner with the rest of the industry.