Florida on Nashville: Music City Has America's Highest Music-Biz Concentration (Now With Fancier Chart)

Clicking around on the 'Book last night, I found that a handful of my fellow Nashvillians had shared a link to

. Many of the Facebookers in question included commentary like, "Nashville continues to win EVERYTHING" and so on. But while recent features from national pubs like

and

feature curated lists and opinion and color pieces that put Nashville at the top of the country's music scenes, Florida's analysis is just that — analysis. Scientific analysis by Florida (and his colleague Charlotta Mellander), based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and more.

And what does it say? It says that our "concentration of music, musicians, and recording and music publishing businesses is nothing short of astounding." Florida goes on to note that "it is important to point out that we are measuring the concentration of musicians and music-related businesses, not the vibrancy or impact or quality of artists to emerge from a regional scene."

Florida, a recognized expert (maybe the expert) in this field, has chimed in on this point before. Last year, he wrote in The Atlantic that Nashville is off the charts in terms of music industry saturation. And in 2009, he wrote a piece called "The Nashville Effect," which made the argument that Jack White's move to Nashville was "part of a broader trend" and that "music, like many other industries, is actually becoming more concentrated and clustered over time."

Nashville is something of an anomaly in this regard, and Florida clearly recognizes that. Here's the most interesting bit, as far as Music City is concerned: