by Mitch Glazier, RIAA Chairman & CEO
Elections have a way of shrinking the country down to a handful of “battleground states” where everything matters — and then the rest of America where we’re just along for the ride.
But today the music community is releasing the third major revision to our “50 States of Music” website, showcasing music’s unifying power to connect and uplift ALL American communities.
Music is everywhere in our country, fueling local economies, supporting millions of jobs and businesses, and enriching our lives — moment by moment, playlist by playlist, person by person.
Built on the latest available data collected through 2022 and supplied by independent music labels, performing rights organizations, independent venues across the US, music museums and others, the project documents a thriving, growing cornerstone of America’s economy and culture.
Overall, music now contributes over $212 billion a year to our GDP, supporting 2.5 million total jobs and over 252,000 music establishments. Our nation is home to 1.6 million songwriters and every year over 250,000 different artists receive performance royalties.
And our cultural legacy shines even brighter across these state-by-state capsules highlighting iconic local artists, music landmarks and businesses. From the Strand Theater in downtown Rockland, Maine (first show — the silent movie My Wild Irish Rose) to the Old Settlers Festival in Tilmon, Texas (population 117, festival attendance 16,000) to Honolulu’s HB Social Club (formerly Hawaiian Brian’s), every back road and city street in America offers its own musical twist!
This year, we’ve expanded the 50 States project to include major music schools and educational facilities, vital national resources that deserve our recognition and respect. From the DMV’s own Levine School (a longtime friend of the RIAA) to Moscow, Idaho’s Lionel Hampton School of Music, these programs are laying the foundation for the next generation of creativity, sparking new genius and heart in every corner of our nation. We are so grateful to the Arts Education Data Project for helping us compile this new information, which deeply enriches the 50 States resource. (And if we’ve missed your venue, institution or you have other suggestions or additions, please let us know at contact@50statesofmusic.com.)
RIAA is proud to lead this ongoing effort to document music’s role and impact across the 50 States, but it wouldn’t be possible without the support of our partners across the music ecosystem — from local haunts, workforce unions and performance rights organizations to our fellow associations and industry groups that fight every day to put music and the people who make it on a strong and sustainable policy footing.
And our collective work has never been so important. As Congress and state leaders grapple to figure out smart guardrails and innovative policies for the AI age, we face a truly unique, once-in-a-generation inflection point.
As founding members of the global Human Artistry Campaign, composed of nearly 200 groups in 34 countries across the creative arts, RIAA and its partners in this project strongly embrace the core HAC principle that “Technology has long empowered human expression, and AI will be no different.” We look forward to new opportunities, sounds and experiences made possible through responsible AI innovation. Indeed, as these technologies mature and contribute positively to music and the arts, we’ll happily add their impacts to future 50 States updates.
But we are also clear eyed about the risks of irresponsible and unethical AI — first and foremost the mass unauthorized and uncompensated scraping of copyrighted music to train AI models. That large scale infringement and exploitation of sound recordings and lyrics threaten to rip a gaping hole in the fabric of America’s music communities, wrongfully appropriating our cultural legacy and siphoning off music’s economic value to enrich global tech giants at the expense of the artists, writers and music companies who shape America’s 50 states.
RIAA and our peers are spearheading efforts to forge accountable, pro-innovation rules for AI. We support genuine innovation while also protecting artists, writers, and rightsholders from industrial scale attacks on their works and deepfake invasions of their individual humanity. On the ground in Congress and state capitols every day, we are making the case for a pro-human, pro-artist vision of AI.
We are fighting for America’s music future across all 50 states.
