Green Room
Green Room
Last spring, the city of Minneapolis conducted the most extensive music survey to date in the city, led by Sound Music Cities in partnership with the Arts and Cultural Affairs Department and local public and private organizations. The company has conducted surveys in cities throughout the country, including Cleveland, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C.
“Minneapolis was a lot like other music communities, where no one’s really asked them how they’re doing,” says Don Pitts, founder and president of Sound Music Cities, a Texas-based company that specializes in music ecosystem research. “And so we tend to find that the music communities have a lot to say because no one’s ever asked them, like 'Hey, how are you doing? What do you need?'”
The survey divided the music community into three subgroups: creatives, industry, and venue/presenter. Beyond questions relating to economic data, the survey also asked respondents about the ecosystem composition, challenges they encounter, and what they need to thrive. The census received 2,258 responses.
So what does the Minneapolis music scene look like? Creatives are very skilled, with 89 percent of respondents having over 10 years of experience. The music community is also male-dominated, with 58 percent of participants identifying as men (including cisgender and transgender men). Venues average 123 live events per year, totaling 17,653 events across all respondents, which is above Columbus, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C.
Only 4 percent of the survey’s respondents fell in the 18–24 age range, and 84 percent were white, which is above the state’s demographic of 73 percent. Whether these demographics are an accurate portrayal of the music scene or shortcomings of the census is unclear. Pitts says that one of the challenges they confront when conducting the census is a lack of trust from the music community. When working on these surveys, Pitts encounters people who don't take it because they think that there’s an agenda.
The 24-year-old indie pop musician Daphne Jane Maki didn’t know about the music census until Mpls.St.Paul Magazine reached out for an interview. As an independent artist, Maki is unable to rely on music for her main source of income, so she currently works as a nanny. And Maki isn’t alone. According to the census, 61 percent of respondents work outside of music, with 85 percent of these relying on their outside job as their primary source of income.
One of Maki’s biggest challenges as a musician is low pay. The census revealed that the average pay per local gig is $231, which is lower than Columbus, Cleveland, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C. And once you split the money between band members, sometimes you're not left with much, Maki says.
Unfortunately, income concerns among the music community are nothing new. In a 2018 survey conducted by the Music Industry Research Association (MIRA), 61 percent of U.S. musicians said their music income is not sufficient to meet their living expenses.
The Minneapolis Music Census also revealed that 36 percent of creatives are concerned with the rising cost of living, and the lack of significant musician income growth in the U.S. could contribute to that. An Occupational Employment Statistics survey released in 2000 stated that the national annual mean wage for musicians and singers was $44,520. According to the MIRA survey, the median income musicians made was about $35,000 in 2017, with only $21,300 from music-related sources. For 2024 Minneapolis survey respondents, the average annual income from music is $28,000.
Maki also struggles with sexism and elitism in the local music scene, which the census identified as top music ecosystem challenges. Not being taken seriously, safety, and comfortability are all issues Maki has faced in the male-dominated community.
“I think oftentimes it’s harder to get people to show up for all-women or just non-men bands and lineups,” Maki says. “I’ve found it’s just harder to get people to show up because of that automatic respect within a male-dominated community, and that respect that automatically shows up for those musicians and those bands can be hard to navigate at times.”
Since the pandemic, it’s been challenging for musicians and venues to get people to show up, period. According to Pitts, it’s the independent audiences that are declining, not the Taylor Swift arena tours. Now, the music industry is competing with the couch and Netflix, he says.
“The venues are still recovering from that time, from that lost revenue, and from those opportunities that never really presented themselves, and all the continued fees and everything and taxes that had to be continually paid,” says Jack Kolb-Williams, the executive director of the Minnesota Independent Venue Alliance (MNIVA), a nonprofit that works to nurture independent venues in the state. “So that is something that we have not been made whole since that time. And so I think that in conjunction with trends changing and people not necessarily doing as much socially as they have, we’ve seen it with ticket sales. We’ve seen it with bar sales and concession sales.”
The pandemic also stunted the growth of young up-and-coming artists, which may contribute to the low number of young artists that the census reported. At the census unveiling, young people expressed the need for more education and resources, Kolb-Williams says. During the pandemic, Kolb-Williams worked at the independent venue The Garage. He noted the large gap in time where young people were not exposed to live music and young musicians were unable to perform.
“After the pandemic, like shortly after is when I started my band that I play with now and started playing with a band, and so I think that would have started a lot sooner, and I could have kind of made a lot more progress earlier on, especially when I wasn’t out of college with a full-time job with more bills to pay and student loans,” Maki says. “So I think that opportunity of playing in a band in college, when you’re all kind of in the same scheme of life and you have that time and that energy, wasn’t available because of COVID, which very much so sucks to look back on and think of the what ifs.”
Venues and presenters are also experiencing regulatory challenges with sound policy, cost of permits, confusion, and inefficiency, the census report says. Pitts has experience with sound ordinance, including addressing complaints in Austin when he launched the city's Music and Entertainment Division in 2010.
“We created some kind of smart, common-sense, practical policy that lowered the sound complaints by 74 percent over three years,” Pitts says. “Sound policy is like one of the easiest policies to address, or it should be if a city is determined and steadfast in their position.”
The music census report suggests ways to address challenges, including creating a live music task force composed of city staff and members of the music community to find solutions to regulatory challenges. But when it comes to next steps, Pitts emphasizes the importance of coming together as a community. It’s not just the city’s responsibility, but the business community, the music community, and other arts communities also need to step up, he says.
“We’ve designed the census post-pandemic for it to be as much of a community building initiative as data collection,” Pitts says. “It’s two parts, where the community coalition building is just as important to us as the data collection.”
And young artists are craving collaboration. Not only does Maki work hard to create lineups that include women, queer, and POC artists, but she also involves people outside of the music community. During her residency at the Green Room last February, she organized other local creatives in the same age range to join her, including artists selling prints, photographers hosting a pop-up photobooth, and vendors from the local vintage scene selling clothing.
“Maybe they went for the music, and now they’re exposed to the photography in the scene. Or maybe they came for the photography and now they’re exposed to the music,” Maki says. “So I think just working together as young creatives is really important, especially in yielding community and hearing each other out and being in that space together.”
As the community works to address the issues in Minneapolis, Kolb-Williams hopes to use his role at MNIVA to make reform a statewide effort.
“I’d say overall, my role and sort of my view of this on the state level is really, really encouraging from what we’ve seen in Minneapolis, that they’ve stepped up and done this report,” Kolb-Williams says. “Being the first city in the state to do so, it just speaks volumes to the dedication and the perspective that the city has when it comes to representing themselves as an arts and music hub here in the Midwest.”
Want to be a part of the conversation? On May 10, MNIVA is teaming up with the Minneapolis Arts and Cultural Affairs Department to host the Minneapolis Music Summit at the Green Room, a day of celebrating and imagining the future of the music community.
