Music scenes and self branding: (Nashville and Austin)

The music cities paradigm, noted as the connection “between music, space and identity, from city scenes to the music of nations,” is interdisciplinary in nature (Connell and Gibson). Discussed in disciplines such as musicology (Cohen; Garrett and Oja; Connell and Gibson) and urban studies (Florida), this paradigm is influenced by “cultures, economics, politics, and technology of the changing structure and geographies of music at local and global levels” (Connell and Gibson). Traditionally, the location of music scenes was “largely a Euro-American construct” (Garrett and Oja 692) and based in the “superstar music cities” of New York City (NYC), Los Angeles (LA), and London. Today the ongoing economic and spatial restructuring of the music industry brought about by the Internet revolution has meant that the “nation-state” discourse has collapsed. Music is omnipresent, mobile and appears to have no geographical heart (Garrett and Oja 700). Amidst the “post-national” (Garrett and Oja 702), mix of music “fixity and fluidity” (Connell and Gibson 7), vibrant music scenes still cluster in smaller cities such as Nashville or Austin, which are fast becoming competitors to the superstar music cities.