Bridging the Sound Gap: Elevating Music Ecosystems through Enhanced Intermediary Skills
Sound Diplomacy’s data collection process involves obtaining feedback from key stakeholders, including artists, organizations, and audiences via surveys and roundtables. This approach helps us identify each ecosystem's unique challenges and opportunities.
Through our extensive work with various cities, we have discovered common challenges that exist across diverse urban centers. Although each ecosystem has its unique features, shared barriers exist. Our recent collaborations have helped us identify these shared hurdles and propose recommendations to help cultural policy makers nurture their music sectors.
This article aims to expand the existing literature concerning music ecosystems at the city level by presenting empirically validated strategies to improve the music sectors of urban areas. We address the challenges artists encounter, identify skill shortages, and explore the potential for government support. The findings presented here combine survey data from four North American cities with best case examples in order to reflect upon potential solutions to these challenges.
Listen to the Data
Rating the Local Music Ecosystem Agents: The Intermediary Problem
The first data pattern we found across the four cities is that intermediary agents such as managers, booking agents, record labels, and distributors are poorly rated in terms of quality and availability (average of 1.8 out of 5). Most artists embrace a period of DIY freedom in their early careers, but look to transition away from this model as they mature and enlist other agents to provide intermediary services. A perceived lack of quality cultural intermediaries creates a problem, however, as artists may continue to provide these services themselves if they cannot find suitable collaborators. This situation reduces capacity for creative endeavors as artists spend precious time and money learning to effectively execute these tasks. This also limits the local music ecosystem's potential development as there are too few quality professionals offering needed services.
Moreover, this also suggests that bottlenecks in the supply chain are not primarily related to artistic creation. Indeed, agents involved in the creative process, such as musicians, recording studios, music producers, and engineers, tend to receive relatively high ratings (an average of 3.3 out of 5). Instead, the challenges seem to lie in intermediation tasks to ensure high-quality live performances, effective music distribution, and overall management of musicians’ careers. Evidence supporting this observation is also present in the following two findings.
City Support Wishlist
According to artists, the preferred ways of receiving support from city governments are aligned with the poor ratings cultural intermediaries receive. This confirms the challenge posed by the intermediation of music, distribution, and exposure, and the need of artists to receive help to reach a broader base of music fans. Presented with a range of speculative options for the preferred manner of local government support, artists across the four cities consistently selected similar responses. These are "Promote live performances of local artists", with an average of 44% of respondents selecting, "Promote local artists in the local media" with 36% selecting, and “Co-finance live music infrastructure” with 28% selecting. These findings indicate a strong need for artists to have their music exhibited, distributed, and promoted to reach a wider base of music consumers.
While it is appropriate for local governments to support these needs, they are tasks closely related to the services of cultural intermediaries such as managers, bookers, and record labels. Seasoned intermediaries are best equipped to effectively provide services such as finding venues for artist performance and promoting music to the widest and most diverse audience possible.
Skills or Knowledge the Local Music Ecosystem Lacks According to Artists
The third finding directly addresses the skills and knowledge that the local music ecosystem lacks. This data helps us understand areas where education could be provided or improved. Additionally, analyzing which skills might be lacking provides insight into the specific types of agents needed to provide specialized knowledge.
Artists across the 4 cities were again consistent in expressing which skills or knowledge sets are missing from their music ecosystems. Marketing, social media, and audience insights skills (53% of respondents selected) rank first; followed by business, fundraising, and financial management skills (45% selected); and knowledge about national and international contacts (42% selected). These skill sets are typically provided by intermediaries such as record labels, booking agents or managers. Therefore, these findings again confirm the importance of these agents within local music ecosystems and reinforce the earlier findings.
Common Difficulties
Taken together, these three findings demonstrate the common difficulties faced by local music ecosystems. These challenges are related to the need for artists to receive support or learn to distribute their music, find opportunities to perform live and reach audiences, and reach different channels for exposure to their music. Rather than receiving support to improve their skills in creating or producing music, artists are more concerned with getting their music out there and reaching a wider audience. Poor intermediary development is exacerbated by a lack of artists skills in these areas, leading to a significant gap in the overall supply of these services and knowledge in local ecosystems. This results in the under-realization of artists’ full potential and the postponement of ecosystem maturation.
Harmony in Solutions: Crafting a Roadmap for City Policymakers
Given the general lack of intermediary agents, skills, and knowledge in local music ecosystems, and the fact that many artists do their own work as DIY intermediary providers, we believe it is necessary to find ways to bolster the addition of these capabilities through a variety of means. In this section, we discuss three harmonious actions that could be taken by policymakers to begin rectifying the issues, each with a distinct impact on the ecosystem.
1. Training to professionals
Provide training for individuals or companies offering services related to intermediary agents. Instead of working with artists directly, this option aims to train intermediary agents to provide higher-quality services.
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What Is It: Generator is the EU-funded, leading music sector development agency in the UK empowering artistic talent and businesses. Generator provides business support to artists, music companies and entrepreneurs in several ways, such as drop-in consultancies and coaching sessions, scale-up events and incubation services, and a series of events and masterclasses, including UK regional and national showcases.
One of their programs is Create: Live, designed for aspiring live music promoters. It offers mentorship, networking opportunities, and skill-sharing sessions, culminating in a fully funded live music event to kickstart students’ careers as promoters.
2. Local music ecosystem events and conferences
Facilitate networking events, workshops, and conferences where local music ecosystem agents (including artists, organizations, and professionals) can connect, share best practices, and collaborate on projects.
This approach allows agents to connect and provides direct awareness to artists of local intermediary services they may not have been aware of.
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What Is It: The Bogotá Music Market - BOmm is a promotion and circulation platform organized by the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce as part of its program to support Creative and Cultural Industries. It's a space designed for musicians, composers, producers, agencies, entrepreneurs, brands, record labels, and publishers to discover new business opportunities and learn about the latest trends in the music industry.
It offers opportunities for Colombian musicians to showcase their productions, compositions, or live shows to national and international brands, publishers, as well as circuits and festivals of international stature. Participation is free, and the selection of applicants is done through an open call with independent curation.
3. Free or Subsidized Boot Camps for DIY Artists
Assuming that intermediary services may still be lacking, and that many artists, especially those in developmental stages, provide themselves with DIY intermediary services, we believe it is crucial for them to do so in an informed and effective manner. Therefore, we propose launching free or subsidized boot camps for artists currently engaged in DIY practice or who are having difficulty finding suitable intermediary support.
These boot camps could promote education related to marketing, audience insights, social media, business and financial management, and work to equip artists with the knowledge necessary to manage their careers. This may include resources concerning self-promotion on social media, managing bookings, audience outreach, financial management; and basic music business education. This solution introduces the skills typically lacking in local music ecosystems and reduces the impact of lacking music intermediaries.
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What is it: The Entrepreneurship Center for Music at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) is a pioneering program in the US that provides education, leadership and advocacy for musicians and arts entrepreneurs. The Center invites its staff and guest lecturers to provide courses for credit and one-on-one mentoring for students, while the center also hosts guest residences with entrepreneurial artists and weekly workshops with industry experts.
UC’s program is one of the earliest and most developed music entrepreneurship programs in the states and globally, and has served as a model for programs of its kind nationwide.
Conclusion
Addressing the gap in quality intermediary services for musicians is but one challenge facing local music ecosystems worldwide. Sound Diplomacy’s research methodologies are designed to identify these challenges through close consultation with those individuals living the distinct realities posed by their music ecosystems day-to-day. Combining this data collection with informed analysis and research concerning international best practices allows us to provide specific, actionable recommendations tailored to specific contexts. Through these means, Sound Diplomacy is working to improve the lives and livelihoods of creators world wide.