Toronto Independent Music Awards

One of the purposes of this blog is to point out why I believe Toronto is incubating a music cluster. While some would be skeptical of the music scene here in Toronto, especially compared to bigger players in the US, I would invite these skeptics to pay the $7 cover for the Toronto Music Awards, and go check out what this city is putting out there. What is this awards show, you might ask?

The Toronto Independent Music Awards are an indie awards ceremony, showcase series and seminar founded in 2004. The concept evolved out of a frustration for the lack of true support for independent musicians. The TIMAs serve as a platform to award and acknowledge up-and-coming independent artists regionally and locally. Our ultimate aim is to create an infrastructure to give independent artists a hand in ways that are actually useful by providing industry connected prizes and community support!

Sounds a lot like those incubators/facilitators we hear about supporting ICT in Waterloo….

What’s in it for the musicians?

– We had over 35 different MAJOR and INDEPENDENT MEDIA at our showcases and at our awards date.

-If you are a selected winner, you not only receive a MAIN PRIZE and UNIQUE PRIZE, but you get to showcase your music in front of a SOLD OUT CROWD at the following award show to take place at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto.

- We have a team of INDUSTRY PROFESSIONAL JUDGES that are trained in each genre category, judging is completely blind and all scores are compiled by Bonaccorso and Cancelliere accounting firm.

Any budding musicians out there should check this show out, or register over at their website (Toronto Independent Music Awards).

 

Florida on Music Clusters

Richard Florida, creative class guru, recently released a preliminary report on Music Clusters (view Florida’s Report here).

There is a growing, mainly qualitative, literature on music scenes. Historians have noted the tendency of musicans and artists to cluster together Mark (1998). The term “music scene” was orginally used to describe the musical genres associated with mid‐20th century crossroads music locations which brought migrating, largely rural, folk and blues based musical talent to major cities and in contact with larger audiences, radio stations, commerical venues, recording studios, agents, producers, and music entrepreneurs. Examples of this include: the New Orleans and jazz, Nashville country, Memphis in blues and soul, rockabilly, and Detroit in Motown and roots rock.

Interesting to note Florida’s mention on the lack of quantitative information existing about music clusters worldwide – this despite the fact that there are many cities recognized as being musical ‘meccas’. Florida goes on to provide a working definition of music ’scenes’…

Bennett and Peterson (2004) define music scenes as “the context in which clusters of producers, musicians, and fans collectively share their common musical tastes and collectively distinguish themselves from others.” Clark, Rothfield and Silver (2008) add that scenes are “modes of organizing cultural production and consumption” that ”foster certain shared values and tastes, certain ways of relating to one another and legitimating what one is doing or not doing.” While examining music scenes is useful and important (and a key element of our broader project), this research note focuses on the factors associated with observed concentrations of employed muscians. Other, more qualitative research will probe the nature of scenes and the actors and networks that comprise them.

Some would argue that scenes are precursors to ‘clusters’, if we were to apply economic theory to a very unique system, such as music scenes. I would propose that music ’scenes’ are actually the economic equivalent of clusters, in a much more organic and natural sense.

While it will be interesting to see more research on the topic of music ‘clusters’, I do wonder whether an effort to create and maintain a true music ‘cluster’ (in the economic sense of the word) could be the death of the creative music scene as many have come to know.