At a few minutes before 6 PM last Thursday, the temperature outside was hovering near zero, the wind was savage, and the Harris Theater for Music and Dance—where the Chicago Music Commission was about to convene its most important program yet—was nearly empty. It looked like there were going to be more people on the CMC’s 17-member panel than in the audience. But by the time moderator Dan Lurie finished introducing the lineup of local music industry experts, including producers, promoters, broadcasters, performers, club owners, and city officials, an audience of 130 had materialized. They’d braved the weather to hear about the CMC’s study of the Chicago music industry, conducted by the University of Chicago’s Cultural Policy Center and presented to the city last summer. What they learned is that Chicago has the third largest music industry in the nation, bigger and more vibrant than music tourism magnets like Nashville or Austin, though you’d never know it based on the city’s handling of the resource.
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The findings in “Chicago Music City,” which crunched data from 2004 for the nation’s 50 largest urban areas and specifically compared Chicago to ten other major music cities, included these: Based on government records, there are 53,000 people working in music-related businesses here, though just 2,000 of them are musicians. We have a whopping 400,000 seats for music fans, but 93 percent of them are in places like the United Center and Soldier Field. And according to data collected by Pollstar, Chicago hosts 1,093 concerts by touring groups annually; the group lacked the financial resources to track local groups or include the Lyric Opera, city festivals, or anything else produced by nonprofits. There are holes in the “Chicago Music City” picture big enough to drive Symphony Center through—some of those numbers sure seem low—but the study’s basic point is undiminished: Chicago’s music industry, though small potatoes compared to New York’s or LA’s, offers value, quality, diversity, and a rich history. The researchers conclude that Chicago is “a music city in hiding.”
Natkin himself has no problem working with city officials these days. The CMC’s producing a continuing series of music-biz seminars sponsored by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and is collaborating with the department on a database that’ll be part of the expanded Chicago Artists Resource Web site, now set to launch this spring. He says the CMC was able to head off a prohibitive promoter’s license proposal, and that Chicago music will soon be the only stuff piped into the city’s airports. But comments by some panel members showed that the old tensions aren’t entirely gone. Jam Productions cofounder Jerry Mickelson got a laugh when he noted that Choose Chicago, the city’s Web site for tourists, lists the Admiral Theatre under nightlife venues but not places like the Double Door, Schubas, Park West, or the Hideout. “In our business, the only time we really hear from the city is when there’s a problem, and it usually has nothing to do with us,” Mickelson said. “That’s something I hope changes, because we’re not just here to be beat up every time something happens somewhere else. We should be part of the fabric of what goes on so that we can help.”
