It seems to me that whatever the outcome of the Storm-fest, win or lose, it will not reflect on Portland's music community that much; after all Storm is appearing on some reality TV show I believe that is not Portland-based nor does Storm pretend to represent Portland I would guess. Storm is a great performer who has carved out her niche and good luck to her on the show. It's good for her career.
As for looking at the music industry as an economic driver for Portland, well yes of course it is. I have made many presentations recently to people in the private and public sectors about how everyone wins when music and the arts as a whole are supported. Many, many Portlanders are employed because of the music industry. My company currently supports six people directly and two contractors, plus we have four bands making decent incomes from performing and recording.
One also has to think local, act global these days as the internet has opened the doors to everyone and is especially effective for artists and labels and extends Portland's reach well beyond the city's borders. One example is our biggest selling band, Dirty Martini, who are extremely popular in the Northwest and yet have sold thousands of albums via the internet to fans in almost every part of the world. And the blog that we run on Pampelmoose.com receives more than 150,000 visits a month of which about 40% of that traffic is foreign. So we are flying the flag for PDX as we are based here but our business and impact is global. Portland's music community, not it's industry or business, is the key to Portland's global reach I believe.
Dave Allen, Pampelmoose.com