What Australian Cities Can Learn from Nashville
May 18, 2025
Why Investing in the Music and Creative Industries Can Support the Growth of Our Cities - In an era of economic uncertainty, AI disruption, and social fragmentation, Australian cities are increasingly seeking resilient models for growth, identity, and employment. While traditional infrastructure continues to dominate urban agendas, a quieter revolution has been taking place in global cities that have embraced cultural investment as a serious growth strategy. No example is more illustrative of this than Nashville, Tennessee—a city that has transformed its global standing, population, economy, and civic confidence through sustained and strategic investment in the music and creative industries.
For Australia, where the creative sector is often undervalued despite its cultural significance and economic potential, Nashville provides a template for how music and arts can power urban regeneration, drive jobs, and position cities as destinations for both talent and tourism. From Music Row to billion-dollar economic returns, the story of Nashville is not one of sentimentality—it is one of strategy.
This article explores the lessons Australian cities can extract from Nashville’s approach, offering a compelling case for why the music industry, and the broader creative sector, must become central to the growth agenda for cities across the country.
1. A City Built on Music: Nashville’s Economic Model - Nashville’s ascent to global creative prominence was no accident. Since the early 20th century, the city has been cultivating a music ecosystem that began with radio and country ballads and matured into one of the most sophisticated music economies in the world. This growth accelerated in the 1950s with the development of Music Row—an intentional clustering of recording studios, publishing houses, labels, and entertainment businesses. What began as a cultural anchor soon evolved into an economic powerhouse.
By 2020, Nashville’s music industry had grown to support more than 80,000 jobs, contributing $15.6 billion annually to the local economy, up from $9.7 billion in 2013. This 62% increase in just seven years reflects a city that not only prioritised culture but actively embedded it in urban policy and economic planning. Of this total, Music Row alone contributes $2.5 billion and supports nearly 12,000 jobs (Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, 2020).
For Australia, where creative professionals are often treated as gig workers rather than contributors to GDP, the lesson is clear: music and arts are not extracurriculars. They are strategic economic sectors. Cities like Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane already have the creative talent and cultural DNA—what’s missing is the systemic investment and structural integration that Nashville has mastered.
2. Business Clusters and the Power of Proximity - One of the most powerful mechanisms driving Nashville’s success is the business cluster effect. The tight proximity of music businesses across Music Row creates a high-density ecosystem in which knowledge transfer, collaboration, and new ventures thrive. This environment has led to a wave of entrepreneurial activity across related fields such as tech, design, event production, media, and creative services.
According to a 2023 report by the International Journal of Music Business Research, Nashville’s music industry is up to 30 times more concentrated than the U.S. average—outpacing even Los Angeles and New York in per capita music business activity (Hodges, 2023). This intense concentration fosters an entrepreneurial ecosystem, where independent professionals routinely launch new projects, incubate companies, and export talent internationally.
Australian cities have the potential to replicate these clusters, but without sustained policy protection, they face rapid erosion due to commercial development, gentrification, and planning neglect. To build our own versions of Music Row, cities must treat cultural zones as protected economic zones—with affordable space, planning incentives, and dedicated industry support.
3. Tourism, Identity, and the Global Pull of Culture - Nashville’s identity as “Music City” is not just cultural—it is economic. Tourism to the city hit over 16 million visitors in 2019, with music venues, festivals, and live performances acting as the primary draw. The result: more than $7.5 billion in tourism-related economic activity and over 74,000 hospitality jobs supported by the music industry alone (Investment Monitor, 2023).
This cultural magnetism turns cities into global brands. It creates soft power, drives population growth, and sustains adjacent industries in hospitality, events, fashion, and design. In Australia, we have cultural events like Vivid Sydney, Mona Foma, Womadelaide, and Dark Mofo that prove the draw of music and arts. But these are too often isolated showcases rather than year-round cultural strategies. What’s missing is a system that links creative identity to long-term tourism, migration, and export plans.
4. Real Estate, Infrastructure, and Urban Transformation - Cultural industries reshape cities physically, not just symbolically. Music Row is a living example of how artistic economies can drive property development, business infrastructure, and urban renewal. Between 2010 and 2019, property values in Music Row increased by 176%, with creative office spaces, hotels, and coworking hubs emerging around the district (City of Nashville, 2019).
Australian cities can harness this same dynamic. However, rather than allowing creative zones to be swallowed by luxury apartments or corporate head offices, we need planning codes that protect cultural infrastructure. Studios, venues, galleries, and rehearsal spaces must be treated like utilities: essential to city function. Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley, Sydney’s Inner West, or Melbourne’s Collingwood all hold the potential for long-term, mixed-use creative renewal—but only if backed by structural policy.
5. Creative Education and Workforce Development - Nashville has also understood the connection between cultural education and economic opportunity. Through partnerships with local schools and universities, as well as support from the CMA Foundation, the city has built a music education pipeline that ensures job readiness, industry access, and inclusive opportunity (Nashville Chamber, 2020).
Australia, by contrast, is facing a rollback in creative education at all levels. TAFE music programs have been cut. Arts degrees have been defunded. And the creative sector is too often excluded from skills-based migration and employment strategies. Yet the World Economic Forum lists creativity, problem-solving, and adaptability as top future-of-work skills. If we want cities with thriving, inclusive futures, we must reverse this trend—investing in creative education as both social equity and economic strategy.
6. What Comes Next: From Inspiration to Action (What can Australian cities actually do?) - They can establish music and creative economy precincts with business development incentives. They can legislate cultural protections in planning codes. They can appoint night mayors, establish music offices, and fund accessible creative hubs. They can invest in workforce pipelines, prioritise arts in school curriculums, and subsidise creative startups.
Most importantly, they can treat cultural infrastructure the way they treat roads, bridges, and hospitals: as essential to public life and prosperity.
In Conclusion: Creativity as Civic Infrastructure - The lesson from Nashville is clear. Music is not decoration. Creativity is not a bonus. These sectors are fundamental to how cities grow, thrive, and lead in the 21st century.
Australian cities are at a crossroads. We can either treat our cultural industries as disposable in the face of economic uncertainty—or we can see them for what they truly are: infrastructure for the imagination, engines for jobs, magnets for global talent, and pillars for urban identity.
Nashville chose the latter—and built an empire on sound.
It’s time we did the same.
References
Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce (2020). Nashville Music Industry Study. https://s3.amazonaws.com/nashvillechamber.com/PDFs/Music+Study+for+Metro+Planning+-+June+11.pdf
Hodges, D. (2023). Nashville and the Creative Business Cluster. International Journal of Music Business Research. https://musicbusinessresearch.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/02_ijmbr-nashville_edit_dan_hodges.pdf
Investment Monitor (2023). Nashville’s Diverse Economy is Music to Investors’ Ears. https://www.investmentmonitor.ai/cities/nashville-diverse-economy-is-music-to-investors-ears/
Office of Economic Opportunity (2015). Nashville Music Industry Study Executive Summary. https://filetransfer.nashville.gov/portals/0/sitecontent/MayorsOffice/docs/EconomicOpportunity/NashvilleMusicIndustryStudyExecutiveSummary.pdf
City of Nashville Planning Department (2019). Music Row Vision Plan. https://filetransfer.nashville.gov/portals/0/sitecontent/Planning/docs/MusicRow/Music_Row_Vision_Plan_Approved062719.pdf
RIAA (2015). Nashville Music Industry Cluster Analysis. https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/nashville-music-industry-study.pdf
Next City (2020). Why Nashville Is Still America’s Music City. https://nextcity.org/features/why-nashville-is-still-americas-music-city
Visit Music City (2024). Nashville’s Music History and Tourism. https://www.visitmusiccity.com/nashville-trip-ideas/story-nashvilles-music-history
CFMT (2023). Nashville Music Census Reveals Key Findings & Opportunities. https://www.cfmt.org/stories/nashville-music-census-reveals-key-findings-opportunities/
Forbes (2019). Will Nashville’s Runaway Growth Kill Music Row? https://www.forbes.com/sites/reginacole/2019/04/24/will-nashvilles-runaway-growth-kill-music-row/
Bloomberg (2016). What Drives Nashville’s Music Industry. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/what-drives-nashville-s-music-industry
Realtor.com (2024). Music Row Housing Market Overview. https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Music-Row_Nashville_TN/overview
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Monash University (2024). Australia’s Live Music Crisis is a Crisis of Confidence. https://lens.monash.edu/@politics-society/2024/04/17/1386635/australias-live-music-crisis-is-essentially-a-crisis-of-confidence
Midia Research (2023). The Impact of Small Venues on the Music Ecosystem. https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/why-the-struggle-of-small-venues-will-affect-the-entire-music-industry