Richard Florida

So I’m reading Richard Florida’s “Whos Your City?” and meanwhile, hypebot is blogging a series about Florida’s books on the Creative class.

here’s a link to todays post:

In the post, he recounts Jack White’s move from Detroit to Nashville as somehow indicative of the draw of an industry center.

He missed one of the biggest advantages of living and recording in Nashville: everything costs less; and everyone makes more money.  I was at a string session yesterday with 9 string players, 1 arranger, 1 producer and 1 engineer.  The string players all got somewhere around 600 bucks for the 6 hours of recording they did.  Thats’ WAY beneath the $225 an hour that is close to union scale.  That said, the good ones would have also had sessions last night at 8pm or 11, and would have made another 200-400 bucks…

The short version is: because there is more competition, people charge less. Because there is more work, people make more.

The top string players in Nashville charge 125/hr (still below scale), and work 60 hours a week….that tops out at about 250,000 a year, which goes a pretty long way here in Nashville.