To gain an understanding of the current needs of Austin’s music community, The Office of Mayor Adler and KUTX will be launching a new Greater Austin Area Music Census on Monday, June 20, 2022. The Greater Austin Music Census will be implemented by Austin-based Sound Music Cities, whose mission is to offer “strategic, community-driven solutions from policy to implementation.”
This launch marks the first time in nearly a decade that the music community will have new data from which to develop policy solutions and approaches. In order to establish a new baseline of data for Austin music industry members, the census will collect data from a variety of local music professionals and analyze the results, including musicians, venue owners, music nonprofits and music business professionals.
Responses will be collected from industry workers of all kinds living or working in the Greater Austin area, including Travis, Williamson, Hays, Caldwell and Bastrop counties. Details for the census will be soon announced, but as a community-led pro-bono effort, local partners are currently being invited to participate in the outreach efforts.
To become an official community engagement partner, please email here.
Lead partners in the Greater Austin Music Census are KUTX, The Office of Mayor Adler and Sound Music Cities. Community engagement partners currently include the following organizations: Austin Community College (Music Business, Performance and Technology Program), Austin Creative Alliance, Austin Economic Development Corporation, Austin Music Foundation, ATX Musicians, Black Fret, Do512, EQ Austin, Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, Juice Consulting, KOOP Radio, KXAN, Mosaic Sound Collective, SIMS Foundation, Texas Music Office, The City of Austin’s Economic Development Department and The Texas Chapter of the Recording Academy.
The census will include a survey that will be open for three weeks to be filled out by anyone working creatively in music, as a musician, or participating in any music related product, service or venue in the greater Austin area. The data will be released publicly through a series of infographics and a summary report later this year by Sound Music Cities.
The very first Austin Music Census was commissioned in 2015 by the City of Austin and conducted by Titan Music Group. Sound Music Cities, which is now overseeing the process, implements the design, deployment, analysis and publishing of custom research projects like this around the country, providing tools for the passionate professionals who wish to dig deeply into root causes for systemic issues impacting today’s urban music scenes. They have worked in Charlotte, Dallas, DC, Seattle and Pittsburgh on similar census projects and are starting music census projects in Chattanooga and Sacramento.
Details for the 2022 Census will soon be announced. For information on Sound Music Cities, visit here.
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Source: The Office of Mayor Adler, Sound Music Cities and KUTX
