Author Richard Florida was kind enough to tweet this link titled Nashville North. It’s a little misleading however, if you’ve ever been to the Calgary Stampede, you’d know that Nashville North is a sweaty tent full of drunk corporate cowboys two-stepping to live country music. No, the Nashville North that the author of The Rise of the Creative Class is talking about is the strong music business that operates in Canada.

Apparently Canada has almost six times as many music businesses per capita than our neighbors to the south.

The Great Musical North has 5.9 record labels, distributors, recording studios and music publishers per 100,000 residents, compared to just 1.2 in the U.S., and Canada’s musical talent is more spread out among a diverse range of cities.

And while these business don’t bring in the mega-bucks that the American labels do, it’s allowing more people to make a living off of music.

The average music studio, label or distributor in Canada employs 5.7 people and brings in $540,000 (all figures U.S.) per year, while American music businesses have 5.9 employees and rake in $4.1 million annually on average. The figures are from 2007, the most recent year for which information is available.

So you take the good with the bad. Cancon requirements may mean you hear more Nickelback on the radio than you should, but it also means Canada has one of the healthiest music businesses in the world.

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