The University of Chicago released a study this week that essentially called foul on Mayor Daley and the city for not supporting its music industry. U of C (also known as Quantitative U) compared the economic impact of the rock and the roll on he 50 most populous metropolitan areas of the U.S., looking at hard numbers like concert ticket sales and albums sold. Chicago was no worse than fourth in any category measured, and I’d like to think that we’re all rather satisfied to sit at #3 behind New York and LA.

One point that the study makes over and over again is that outsiders don’t view Chicago as a music-friendly town in the same way they do Austin or Nashville. Well, yeah - Austin bases a good bit of its citywide annual revenue on the tourism from the Austin City Limits festival and SXSW, and the only good reason to go to Tennessee is visit the roots of old country music, so those cities HAVE to market themselves as “music towns.” Chicago is too busy courting revenue from major airlines, telecomm, food processing, and manufacturing to bother with stroking its indie music scene…and that suits us just fine. After all, we’re a big city and if we were New York, we’d have to deal with New Yorkers.

Tee hee.

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