SongwritingHooks

Best Songwriting Cities

My poking around into the state of the songwriting industry yielded an interesting list of the top songwriting cities in the world. Assuming you measure "top songwriting cities" by the number of people in a city searching Google for "songwriting." A bit of a reach, I know. This list needs at least the qualifier that this is for the English-speaking world, and should probably be "top 10 cities most interested in learning about songwriting in English," but that's a bit unwieldy.

Top Songwriting Cities in the World

1. Nashville, TN, USA
2. Melbourne, Australia
3. Auckland, New Zealand
4. Brisbane, Australia
5. Sydney, Australia
6. Irvine, CA, USA
7. Los Angeles, CA, USA
8. Boston, MA, USA
9. Dublin, Ireland
10. Atlanta, GA, USA

Australia and New Zealand have 4 of the top 5 spots, really? Who knew?

Top Songwriting Cities in the U.S.

1. Nashville, TN
2. Austin, TX
3. Irvine, CA
4. Boston, MA
5. Los Angeles, CA
6. New York, NY
7. Atlanta, GA
8. St Louis, MO
9. Raleigh, NC
10. Seattle, WA

This data comes from google.com/trends. I don't know why Austin comes above Irvine when you segment the U.S. list out, but doesn't show up at all on the global list. Feel free to write Google a strongly worded letter. 

Songwriting: A dying industry?

I've been doing a bit of research into the state of songwriting these days, and found some disturbing trends.

The following chart shows the number of searches performed on Google for the word "songwriting" over the last few years.

The horizontal line marked "1.00" is the average over the last 6 years, and the top blue squiggly line indicates the relative frequency of searches for "songwriting." At this point in 2009, we're at about half the level we were at in 2004, and the trend has been consistently downward over these years.The bottom blue squiggle, interestingly, shows the frequency with which the word "songwriting" appears in the news -- and that's been on the rise. So the dip in interest in songwriting can't be because it's less relevant.

Decrease in Songwriting Interest?

What gives? I've tried to come up with an explanation that works, but I'm at a loss. The options, as I see them:

• THEORY: people are just as interested as ever in songwriting, but aren't looking to the Internet for information. VALIDITY? I doubt this. I'd argue that for everything imaginable, the last 6 years will have seen an increase in searches for any how-to query.

• THEORY: people are still looking online for songwriting info, but Google isn't their search engine of choice. VALIDITY? Really doubt this. Not only do search engines get more traffic now than ever, Google's market share keeps growing. And it's unlikely that songwriters, as a group, all happen to have the same bias against the world's most popular search engine.

• THEORY: the people who would search Google for "songwriting" are the wannabe songwriters, not the legitimate ones, and therefore the graph just shows that there are fewer wannabes. VALIDITY? Very possible, though I'd still wonder why there are fewer wannabes. (One of the reasons above or below, perhaps?) And regardless, wasn't every successful songwriter once a wannabe? So if this theory is right, it doesn't buy me any peace.

• THEORY: there are simply fewer people interested in songwriting today. VALIDITY? This is what I'm left with.

This obviously leads to the question: Why do people care less today about songwriting? Here I have nothing but random speculation. In an Internet age, where file sharing has made it harder to get rich off writing music, maybe we've lost the opportunists looking for a quick buck. Or maybe legitimate musical contenders are too discouraged by the state of music, or the state of the industry, and are jumping off the bandwagon. What are your theories? I'd love to hear them.

(graph from the Google Trends tool: google.com/trends)