What’s the deal?
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You know how some places are loud and proud about their own music scene – places like Portland, Seattle, New Orleans, Canada, even Iceland?
We believe Alaska should be proud of the incredible music we make here. From our rock bands, bedroom musicians, and fireside jams to our original operas and major festivals, we have so much to shout about. And the Alaskans making it happen deserve more public recognition and concrete support.
AKIMI has asked Portland and Seattle and Iceland (and more) how to build that support for a stronger music scene. They’ve told us: start by asking who’s out there, and prove how much work is being done.
That’s why we are measuring Alaskans’ participation in music and studying the size of music’s economic footprint in Alaska. We’re also measuring the impact of COVID-19 venue closures on our music community.
This is one step towards showing the business community, policymakers, and other powers that be that our impact is important, and we deserve a place at the table.
Alaska music rocks. Let’s get together, raise our voices, and prove it.
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AKIMI, the Alaska Independent Musicians Initiative, has been working towards this survey for several years. Supporting partners include the Alaska State Council for the Arts, the Atwood Foundation, the Municipality of Anchorage, and the Juneau Arts & Humanities Council, among others.
AKIMI’s goal is to elevate Alaskan music and support Alaska musicians, by sharing resources with our music community and sharing Alaskan voices with the world. We’re working on bridging our vast geography and unique challenges to bring our music community together. AKIMI organizes the annual Alaska Music Summit, shares news about grants and other resources for musicians, and works on the Alaska Playlist Project, among many other things.
AKIMI developed this survey with a lot of help from our friends at MusicPortland and MusicOregon (creators of the Portland Music Census and Oregon Music Census), particularly Meara McLaughlin and Zac Schwartz. We also received help and guidance from Diane Hirshberg at the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Alaska, and Laura Forbes at the Alaska State Council for the Arts.
The core team at AKIMI working on the survey includes program director Marian Call, Lauren Petersen, Lisa Hawkins, Emily Anderson, Theresa Watt, Yngvil Vatn Guttu, Karrie Pavish Anderson, Lisa Puananimohala’ikalani Denny, Zac Pease, and Kat Moore, with additional contracting and volunteer help every step of the way.
Community members and music makers who have contributed key feedback and support include Lucy Peckham, Betsy Sims, Qacung Stephen Blanchett, Arias Hoyle, Sarah Felder, Peter Ratner, Ryan Bowers, Taylor Vidic, Jess Peña, Zac Pease, Lance Mitchell, Michael Thomas Howard, Nelson Kempf, Erin Heist, Annie Bartholomew, Cameron Brockett, Heather Stewart, Michael Dickerson, Patrick Race, Ira Perman, and Cody Herron-Webb. -
Yes. This survey does not ask for your email, phone number, name, band name, business name, or any other identifying information. We are collecting browser IP addresses, but that is only so we can identify spam or bot-created answers.
Most importantly, though, we’re not studying single records to get a picture of an individual or single business – we’re zooming out and aggregating this information to get the best look we can at our entire music scene.
Because we’re not collecting identifying information, we can only contact you to share the results if you sign up for our email list here. We hope you will!
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We know how big certain economic players are in Alaska, like oil and gas or aviation. But we have no way of knowing how big our music industry is. There are no tax records to look at, no references, no resources to prove how much we contribute. When musicians make money, our work gets credited to other industries – like bars and restaurants, hospitality, or conventions.
This means that the value created by musicians and music industry businesses is invisible until we do the hard work of measuring it.
A lot of folks in Alaska earn a little music money on the side, or even under the table. But that’s exactly why we’re doing this survey: to include ALL of that hard work as we try to estimate how much musicians contribute to Alaska’s economy.
So even if you’re giving us rough figures, even if it’s only a little, please: tell us how much you or your business earned making music. We see your work, and we believe it’s valuable.
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AKIMI, the non-profit undertaking this survey, owns the data — and AKIMI is made up of working musicians and music industry workers. The data will NOT be sold.
AKIMI will sometimes engage or partner with respected and qualified data analysts to answer specific questions from the data, but will not give up ownership of the data under any circumstances. Whenever possible, these partners or contractors will be Alaskan. Examples of partners we have already talked to about analyzing this data include the University of Alaska’s Institute for Social and Economic Research and McKinley Research Group. -
There are hundreds o questions we want to investigate with this data, and we’ll have to take them one at a time. That means reports will come out over time, on many different topics, and sometimes on different regions.
We hope to have some initial reports by Oct. 15th, but we’ll present a lot more at the Alaska Music Summit, which happens every January. The 2024 summit will take place in Anchorage and online on the weekend of Jan. 12-14. Save the date, and join our mailing list to receive news of the survey results! -
Yes! We do!
Mostly, we need people to help us shout about this survey between now and September 2nd. So tell your bandmates, students, friends and family. Post a short video or photo explaining that you’ve decided to take it, and what you thought. If you’re connected to music venues or businesses, ask them if they’ve taken the census.
Want some tools? Find them here (or on our Facebook page or Instagram).
Don’t forget to remind folks of the deadline: Saturday Sept 2nd at midnight!
HOW TO TAKE THE SURVEY
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This takes between 5-15 minutes for most people.
We’ll have some questions about guesstimating your music-related income, so you might want that info handy – but you won’t have to be very precise.
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Many questions are optional, and can be skipped. But please tell us as much as you can!
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If you leave the survey open in your browser, you might be able to leave and come back, but if you refresh your tab or navigate away, you can’t start again from the middle.
(That’s because it’s anonymous – we aren’t taking emails or asking you to log in.)
So it’s best to start and finish all at once, without stopping for a long time in the middle.
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Yes, you can. If the online survey presents an accessibility issue, you can take the survey over the phone. Call 206-552-9296 and leave a message.
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If you reach out to us, we’ll do our best to find translation help for you or anyone else in our music community. We can’t guarantee we’ll find somebody, especially close to the Sept 2nd deadline but we will do our best.
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Nope! When the survey closes on Sept 2nd, it’s closed.
But if you learn about this after the survey is over, we would still love to connect with you. Get in touch by email — we do want to know about your experience making or supporting music in Alaska.
WHO SHOULD TAKE THE SURVEY
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Everyone should take the individual survey. Maybe you’re someone who should take the business survey too! Here’s a detailed explanation for you.
Still not sure what to do? Start by taking the individual survey, since it’s for everyone. You can ask us whether the business survey is right for you — we’ll help.
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Tell everyone in the band to take the survey! Everyone should report their own take-home portion of any earnings (not the band’s as a whole). We’re trying to count every person!
If this is a fully professional ensemble with its own operating budget and staff, like a choir, symphony, or theatre company, individual members should take the individual census AND a representative for the group can also report the ensemble as a business. (Be sure that only one person takes the survey for any ensemble.)
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Music makers wear lots of hats, and we try to give you space to tell us about that.
You can fill out BOTH of the surveys we have here to give us the most complete picture of what you do.
Take the individual artist/teacher survey ONLY ONCE, and tell us there about all the different ways you teach or make music as an artist. If you’re in several bands, for example, you can summarize all of your individual work and income into your total “artist income” for the survey.
You can take the music business survey MORE THAN ONCE, as long as you are the only person answering for each business, and as long as they are genuinely multiple separate businesses (say, if you run a record label, but you also do freelance live sound as a contractor, or if you have a cafe with two separate locations and each hosts live music).
If you’re taking the surveys multiple times, you don’t have to complete the final demographics questions every time.
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Take the survey anyway! We still have questions for you. Money is not the only way to measure the importance of music in our community.
If you volunteer, play for fun, perform in a choir or band without pay, or perform as part of religious services without pay, we definitely want to hear from you.
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We still have questions for you, even if you’re only a supportive audience member. Go for it!
If you work at a business that makes music happen, like audio engineering, running a music venue, selling instruments, or booking bands for weddings, anything like that, check out the list of music businesses that should take our survey. Maybe your place of work should be represented!
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This survey is particularly for people who lived in Alaska for at least a full year between 2019-2022.
If you moved away or moved back during that time, or both, that’s OK, you can specify which years you were an Alaska resident (in general, use the PFD standard).
If you are an Alaskan making music but you haven’t lived at home for a while, get on our mailing list — you’re still an important part of our scene! But this particular survey is not intended for you.
FOR BUSINESSES
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That depends. We have some questions on the survey about the business’s total income (ballpark) over the past few years, and some questions that are best for someone who’s a decision-maker at the business — probably a manager, owner, or high-level administrator.
If that’s you, YES, take the business survey. If it’s not you, PLEASE ASK one of those decisionmakers to take it.
Not sure who to ask, or how? Just ask us to reach out to your employer and we’ll try to do that.
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Even if you just do a little work with musicians, like hosting a few concerts per year or selling a little pro audio gear, we want to hear from you. You make music happen!
There are questions in the music business survey that allow you to clarify how much of your business’s work is related to music, and if you answer those honestly to the best of your ability, we’ll know how to measure your participation.
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Yes! If your business pays for music — like hiring a background band for an event or licensing music for a commercial — you are participating in the music industry.
Sometimes music’s added value isn’t in dollars paid directly to your business, but music does add value, or it wouldn’t be worth spending money on their work. If it’s a significant part of your budget, or contributes to your final product (like weddings or other events), we do want to hear from you.
Not every question in the survey may fit your situation, but some will, and we would benefit from you sharing those answers.
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Yes! If your organization works in music or with musicians in any way, we definitely want to hear from you.
The questions about overall revenue might be easier to answer by thinking in terms such as “operating budget” instead — not all the questions will fit a non-profit perfectly. But most should be answerable.
Please note the places where we ask for income from COVID relief programs to be excluded (or reported), since that’s part of what we’re trying to measure.
If your fiscal year is different from the calendar year, choose the four fiscal years that best reflect a full year before COVID-19 venue closure impacts, the duration of the closures/restrictions, and at least a year after. As long as you separate out income into four years without double-reporting anything, that’s fine.
If you have more questions about how to best fill out the survey, reach out, we’ll help.
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There are so many different kinds of businesses and organizations working in the music industry that it’s hard to write questions worded to fit every possible situation. So a couple questions may be an awkward fit.
We encourage you to answer to the best of your ability, and make use of the “other” options or text responses to explain if you need to.
Many questions are optional, so if you find something that truly doesn’t fit, it’s okay to skip it.
LOOKING AHEAD
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AKIMI is partnering with some Alaskan data experts as well as some global industry experts to clean the data and start interpreting parts of it right away. Initial reports on the basics, plus detailed reports on Anchorage and Juneau, will be out in fall/winter 2023.
Over the winter we will be seeking more partners to do localized deep dives and analysis of particular questions, potentially by partnering with the University of Alaska and with trusted Alaskan research firms.
We do not plan to sell the raw data under any circumstances.
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We would like to do another census a few years in the future, so we can compare data sets. (Future surveys would be much shorter, since we hope to skip the work of measuring the impact of a global pandemic.)
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Knowing the size of our music sector is important for music advocacy. Most municipalities and business communities don’t see how much musicians contribute, and this data gives us a tool to remind them that music makers are an important interest group, and we deserve to be considered in policy and decisionmaking.
Other music communities around the world have implemented programs that we can imagine working here, in Alaska, to support and enrich our music sector. A few examples that have inspired us:
Funds for direct grants to artists
Funds for direct grants or no-interest loans to music venues for repairs or upgrades
Travel support for touring musicians
Making sure artists in all music genres are included in consideration for artistic support and grants
Incentives to record or film major music projects in Alaska
Prioritizing radio airplay and booking opportunities for Alaskan musicians
Building tools to connect Alaskan filmmakers and musicians, to make music licensing easier and more local
Advocating for music education in all forms
Creating working groups of music makers to develop new opportunities, like festivals or tourism projects
An organized push for better local laws about (for example) noise limits, music festivals, venue safety, event insurance, alcohol licensing, all ages spaces, ticketing fees and truth in ticketing, and more
If you care about this work, we definitely need your support. The best ways to get started: 1) get on our email list, so you know what’s developing, and 2) plan to attend the Alaska Music Summit or one of our Music Meetups.
We believe in this music community, and we’re putting our belief to work. Join us!
Photo by Annie Bartholomew