There’s a new gravity well in American finance, and it’s not New York. It’s not even Silicon Valley. It’s Dallas. It’s Austin. It’s Y’all Street.

And anyone paying attention could have seen it coming. The Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) is preparing for launch in 2026.  TXSW is not some bulletin board; it’s backed by billions from institutions that have grown weary of the compliance culture and cost of New York. Goldman Sachs’s Dallas campus is now operational. BlackRock and Charles Schwab have shifted major divisions to the Lone Star State. Tesla and Samsung are expanding giga-scale manufacturing and chip fabrication plants.

A strong center of gravity for capital formation is moving south, and with it, a new cultural economy is taking shape. And AI may not save it:  Scion Asset Management, “Big Short” investor Michael Burry’s hedge fund, disclosed to the SEC that it had a short bet worth $1.1 billion against Nvidia and Palantir.   He’s also investing in waterthat AI burns.  So not everyone is jumping off a cliff.

A New Realignment

Texas startups have raised roughly $9.8 billion in venture capital through Q3 2025, pushing the state to a consistent #4 ranking nationally. Austin remains the creative and software hub, while Dallas–Fort Worth and Houston lead in AI infrastructure, energy tech, and finance.

The TXSE will formalize what investors already know: capital markets no longer need Manhattan to function.

And that raises an uncomfortable question for the music industry:

If capital, infrastructure, and innovation no longer orbit Wall Street, why should music?

Apple Learned It the Hard Way

Despite New York’s rich musical legacy—Tin Pan Alley, Brill Building, CBGB, and the era of the major-label tower when Sony occupied that horrible AT&T building and flew sushi in from Japan for the executive dining room—the city has become an increasingly difficult place to sustain large-scale creative infrastructure. Real estate costs, over-regulation, and financial concentration have hollowed out the middle layer of production.  As I’ve taught for years, the key element to building the proverbial “creative class” is cheap rent, preferably with a detached garage.

Even Apple Inc. learned long ago that creativity can’t thrive where every square foot carries a compliance surcharge. That’s why Apple’s global supply chain, data centers, and now content operations span Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina instead of Midtown Manhattan.  And then there’s the dirty power, sump pumps and subways—Electric Lady would probably never get built today.

The lesson for the music business is clear: creative capital follows economic oxygen. And right now, that oxygen is in Texas.

The Texas Music Office: A Model for How to Get It Done

If you want to understand how Texas built a durable, bipartisan music infrastructure, start with the Texas Music Office (TMO). Founded in 1990 under Governor Bill Clements, the TMO was one of the first state agencies in America to recognize the music industry not just as culture, but as economic development.

Over the decades—through governors of both parties—the TMO has become a master class in how to institutionalize support for creative enterprise without strangling it in bureaucracy. From George W. Bush’s early focus on export promotion, to Rick Perry’s integration of music into economic development, to Greg Abbott’s expansion of the Music Friendly Communities network, each administration built upon rather than dismantled what came before.

Today, the TMO supports more than 70 certified Music Friendly Communities, funds music-education grants, tracks economic data, and connects local musicians with investors and international partners. It’s a template for how a state can cultivate creative industries while maintaining fiscal discipline and accountability.

It’s also proof that cultural policy doesn’t have to be partisan—it just has to be practical.

When people ask why Texas has succeeded where others stalled, the answer is simple: the TMO stayed focused on results, not rhetoric. That’s a lesson a lot of states—and more than a few record labels—could stand to relearn.

Artist Rights Institute: Doing Our Part for Texas and Beyond

The Artist Rights Institute (ARI) has done its part to make sure that Texas and other local music and creators aren’t an afterthought in rooms that are usually dominated by platform interests and coastal trade groups.

When questions of AI training, copyright allocation, black-box royalties, and streaming transparency landed in front of the U.S. Copyright Office, Congress, and U.K. policymakers, ARI showed up with the Texas view: creators first, no speculative ticketing, no compulsory “data donation,” and no silent expropriation of recordings and songs for AI. ARI has filed comments, contributed research, and supported amicus work to make sure Texas artists, songwriters, and indie publishers are in the record — not just the usual New York, Nashville, and Los Angeles voices.

Just as important, ARI has pushed financial education for artists. Because Y’all Street doesn’t help creators if they don’t know what a discount rate is, how catalog valuations work, how to read a mechanical statement, or why AI licenses need to be expressly excluded from legacy record and publishing deals. ARI programs in Texas and Georgia have focused on:
– explaining how federal policy actually hits musicians,
– showing how to negotiate or at least spot AI/derivative-use clauses,
– and connecting artists to local music industry infrastructure.

In other words, ARI joined other Texas and Georgia organizations to be a translator between Texas’s very real music economy and the fast-moving policy debates in Washington and the U.K. If Texas is going to be the place where music is financed, ARI wants to make sure local artists are also the ones who capture the value.

Music’s Texas Moment

Texas is no newcomer to the business of music. Its industry already generates over $13.4 billion in annual economic activity, supporting more than 91,000 jobs across its certified cities. Austin retains the crown of “Live Music Capital of the World,” but Denton, Fort Worth, and San Antonio have joined the state-certified network of “Music Friendly Communities”.

Meanwhile, universities from UT-Austin to Texas A&M study rights management, AI provenance, and royalties in the age of generative audio.

The result: a state that treats music not as nostalgia, but as an evolving economic engine.  Plus we’ve got Antone’s.

Wall Street’s ‘Great Sucking Sound,’ Replayed

Ross Perot once warned of “that giant sucking sound” as jobs moved south. Thirty years later, the sound you hear isn’t manufacturing—it’s money, data, and influence flowing to Y’all Street.

If the major labels and publishers don’t track that migration, they risk becoming cultural tenants in cities they no longer own. The next catalog securitization, the next AI-royalty clearinghouse, the next Bell Labs-for-Music could just as easily be financed out of Dallas as from Midtown.

Because while New York made the hits of the last century, Texas may well finance the next one.  We’ve always had the musicians, producers, authors, actors and film makers, but soon we’ll also have the money.

Y’all Ready?

The world no longer needs a Midtown address to mint creative wealth. As the TXSE prepares its debut and Texas cements its position as the nation’s innovation corridor, the music industry faces a choice:

Follow the capital—or become another cautionary tale of what happens when you mistake heritage for destiny.

Because as Apple learned long ago, even the richest history can’t compete with the freedom to build something new.