Matt Mandrella advocates for every city having a music office in a recent Fast Company piece. He cites the impact of music offices in Texas, Tulsa, and Huntsville.
He says you don’t get these results from just booking shows. The disjointed efforts of individual entities is often inefficient and results in duplicated efforts. Music offices can streamline and coordinate efforts and perhaps most importantly, can work to develop the infrastructure, policy, and support networks for venues, artists, schools, restaurants, and allied businesses.
A good illustration of this is found in a blog post I wrote last November on another Fast Company article Mandrella authored on Huntsville’s efforts to support house concerts. The city was providing support in everything from noise ordinance training, advice on forming LLCs, and pointing would be venues to ticketing services.
Arts Midwest published some related research this past summer.
He offers advice for forming music offices, advocating for the solicitation of feedback and input all the entities in the municipality from the largest to the smallest, most commercial to most niche. It shouldn’t just be the venues, musicians, equipment and labor providers and businesses directly associated with performances, but also schools and other entities contributing to the development of the local talent pipeline.
Second, it is important to prioritize local ownership, legacy venue protections, and underrepresented artists in program design. Who has typically been left on the sidelines and needs a megaphone? Where do you have the most impact opportunity?
Lastly, do not underestimate the importance of the less exciting aspects of a successful music sector: zoning reform, noise ordinances, and affordability policies needed to accompany cultural investment to prevent gentrification and inequities
