Music Row, the stretch of 16th and 17th Avenues South where Victorian houses became offices with studios built behind them, took shape as the nerve center of the American country music industry in the 1950s and remains one of the most concentrated hubs of music publishing and production in the world. The Row took shape when labels, publishing houses, and recording studios began clustering on these residential streets, converting Victorian houses into offices and building studios behind them. At its peak the Row housed hundreds of music businesses — every major country label and the studios that produced virtually all of American country music for three decades.
The industry has consolidated since the 1990s, with major labels moving to larger facilities and development pressure replacing historic music buildings with condominiums and hotels. The music community has fought those losses with mixed success. But the core institutions remain, and Nashville continues to dominate country music recording and publishing in a way that has no parallel in any other American genre.
The songs being written on these streets today will be on the radio for years.