The Why of this website

Update: It's fascinating that within a month of writing this Update, I got recruited for a job based in part on my work at Rhythm Changes. I didn't have any idea that would happen when writing the following.

Talking on the Strong Towns Podcast with Chuck Marohn was the widest distribution of Rhythm Changes ideas to-date, with over 6,700 listeners at the time of writing:

This Vancouver-Based Artist Is Writing Music…About Building Strong Towns!

People have taken the Strong Towns approach in a lot of fascinating directions, but this might be one of the most fascinating yet: William Chernoff is a young, Vancouver-based musician who has written songs inspired by Strong Towns. During the pandemic, Ch...

PodBeanPodBean Development

The reason I came on was that I previously wrote this, and Marohn wanted to discuss it.

Having faith in local music

Strong Towns is about building wealth in local communities, rethinking civil engineering to be more people-first and sustainable, and making reasonable choices in municipal politics. Marohn is a former civil engineer turned non-profit leader.

But I came on to talk music scenes, so I ended up with probably my most concise statements about having faith in local music:

"The true route to satisfaction as a fan of the arts is with the people around you, in your backyard. It can't just be about listening to global music recordings; there has to be a promise of face-to-face."

Later, I said:

"the music scene can and should be a place to grow wealth. The idea that the music scene is another type of small community that deserves to [...] find its own way, and to not have an outside force with a capital allocation mindset pumping wealth through it, is important to me."

Do you agree?

Well, if yes, what should be done to grow wealth in local music?

The magic Stage 2

One of the big points in my initial article was that, in the small-scale Canadian arts world at least, there are three stages of music businesses: