Detroit's Challenge: Building Music Industry

Building Detroit's Music Industry
TO GO WITH AFP STORY by Rob Lever, Entertainment-US-music-company-Motown Three children and their father visit the Motown Museum in Detroit, Michigan, June 16, 2009. Fifty years after the birth of Motown, the music lives on as a legacy for a city that has seen more than its share of hard times in the past decades. AFP PHOTO/Jim WATSON (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)
TO GO WITH AFP STORY by Rob Lever, Entertainment-US-music-company-Motown Three children and their father visit the Motown Museum in Detroit, Michigan, June 16, 2009. Fifty years after the birth of Motown, the music lives on as a legacy for a city that has seen more than its share of hard times in the past decades. AFP PHOTO/Jim WATSON (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

For many people throughout the world, Detroit is as synonymous with music as it is cars. Whether they're techno enthusiasts in Berlin and Tokyo, Detroit rock fans in London, or Motown fans just about everywhere, people recognize Detroit's musical pedigree.

And yet, the music industry here barely registers on the map, according to a study by the Martin Prosperity Institute in Toronto. The study looked at figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis to pinpoint where music professionals and businesses are clustered among U.S. metropolitan areas.

Cities such as Nashville, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Austin, Texas, were among the top.

Detroit, however, came in at No. 37.

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