The Music Census helps communities understand the people, places, and activity that make up their local music ecosystem. It provides a shared baseline for clearer priorities, better decisions, and more productive conversations across the community.

Music scenes are social, cultural, and economic. They look different depending on where you stand. If communities want to support music through policy, funding, and infrastructure, they need data that reflects those realities.

A Comprehensive View of the Entire Ecosystem

The Music Census provides a comprehensive view of the entire local music ecosystem, capturing lived experience across musicians, venues, presenters, and related industry roles.

This wide-angle view helps communities see how different parts of the ecosystem interact, where pressure points exist, and where opportunities for action are most realistic.

Why a Music Census Is Necessary

Music is an industry but it's also a fragmented ecosystem of freelancers and small businesses without centralized leadership or coordination. There's very little federal data to help us isolate and understand the full extent of music-related activity across industries and occupations that comprise a music ecosystem essential to a community.

A local Music Census fills this gap by directly surveying the people who make up the ecosystem and reflecting their lived experience back to the community.

Community-Led by Design

The Music Census is intentionally community-led.

Local partners lead outreach and engagement, building trust, participation, and long-term ownership of the data. Sound Music Cities designs the framework, guides the process, analyzes the data, and translates findings into clear, usable insights.

This approach respects the work communities already do and results in stronger participation, better context, and more meaningful outcomes.

Focused Versions of the Music Census

Some communities choose to focus on a specific part of their music ecosystem. These focused versions use the same Music Census framework and philosophy, applied to a narrower lens.

• Musician / Creative Census
  Captures lived experience, income realities, barriers, and support needs of musicians and creative workers.

• Venue / Presenter Census
  Examines the operational realities of venues, promoters, presenters, and festivals, including regulatory challenges and sustainability.

• Local Music Audience Questionnaire
  Provides insight into attendance behavior, discovery, motivations, and barriers to participation in local live music.

Focused versions can stand on their own or serve as a starting point toward a comprehensive Music Census.

From Insight to Action

Some communities choose to pair their Music Census work with focused implementation support.

This support helps translate findings into a short, practical framework aligned with local capacity, timelines, and resources, allowing communities to move forward without overcommitting.