State Lawmakers Fight to Keep Music Industry in New York

Members of the New York state legislature have passed a tax break for the music industry. Will it make New York the center of the music world again?

That's the hope of those who voted in favor of the measure--which requires only approval from the governor to go into effect--that would give up to a $25 million incentive for musicians and music production in the state. According to Crain's, the motivation was the fact that the music industry over the past two decades has increasingly left New York, while the state's film industry has boomed, due in large part to similar tax breaks and incentives for companies to shoot here.

The tax breaks are not without their critics, however. Edmund J. McMahon, president of the Empire Center for Public Policy, a watchdog group that seeks to emphasize "reforms grounded in free-market principles, personal responsibility, and the ideals of effective and accountable government" called the new music credit “one of the biggest scams any industry has ever pulled off.”

“The whole pretense behind this bill is that (New York) will lose 100% of the music business if you don’t pay them to do it here,” McMahon said, “that it will all go away. And New York will have no desirability. That’s just flat-out wrong.”

If this does receive Governor Cuomo's signature, we could see a big boom in New York state music, just as every time you turn around you seemingly find something filming in New York state.