For the most part, economic development efforts to target specific growth industries are a fool’s errand. We simply do not know what the industries of the future will be. Targeting today’s growth industries can position a community to fall behind as the economy shifts.

But occasionally, there are industries in which the community has such an obvious competitive advantage that focusing on them makes sense. Such is the case in Maryland with its focus on the life sciences and cybersecurity. Being home to the National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration, Johns Hopkins University, University of Maryland Medical System, Fort Detrick, National Security Agency, and U.S. Cyber Command demonstrates a need to wrap private investment and economic ecosystems around cutting-edge institutions that tend to innovate on grand scales.

In Maryland, another promising economic cluster is quietly forming that may be less obvious. I’m talking about the live music industry in Central Maryland. There was a time when hearing live music with a large audience in this part of the state required a voyage to downtown Columbia and Merriweather Post Pavilion. It’s a fine venue, rendered all the more pleasant by an extensive five-year rehabilitation project that commenced in 2014. Over the past two decades, $65 million has been invested in the historic venue.

To provide a sense of how impactful this kind of amenity can be, Northern Virginia Magazine recently featured the venue, spotlighting Merriweather’s new beer garden. That’s the kind of thing that can bring commerce into Maryland, generating sales and much-needed tax revenues.

While there have been other venues featuring live music, including the now-defunct Hammerjacks (1977-2006), many of us Central Marylanders, when our favorite bands aren’t playing at Merriweather, have in years past found ourselves making the lengthy and often unpleasant journey to Wolf Trap in Fairfax County, Virginia, about 50 miles and perhaps many hours from downtown Baltimore depending on traffic. Today, however, the live music offerings in Central Maryland are much improved, and it may be that many Northern Virginians will make the trek into Maryland to listen to top artists. That’s the kind of altered dynamic that is characteristic of communities poised for expanding commerce.

My eyes (and ears) were truly opened to the possibility of Baltimore becoming a national live music hub when I heard Duran Duran at the refurbished CFG Bank Arena downtown. While there are more luxurious and larger arenas to be found elsewhere, the venue has a plentiful food selection and is far tidier than it was before the renovation.

The arena’s $250 million rehabilitation shows. But while the new arena is pleasing to the eyes, it’s utterly enchanting to the ears. The acoustics are first-rate. It’s a venue that has already hosted the likes of Janet Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks, Anita Baker and SZA. The arena was recently ranked 10th on Billboard’s list of the planet’s highest-grossing venues. That’s a world-class outcome.

Before I heard Duran Duran’s cover of “White Lines” at CFG Bank, I heard Diana Ross at The Lyric. This is a smaller venue, offering not quite 2,600 seats, but the acoustics there are also excellent, and it offers especially beautiful space. The Lyric is known for its exquisitely professional staff and by being a bit smaller is able to attract performers who may be unable to draw the most massive crowds but nonetheless have intensely loyal followings, like Morrissey, who I also recently heard there.

Central Maryland offers other phenomenal venues, including the Hippodrome Theatre and Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore as well as the Strathmore and Fillmore, both in Montgomery County. There are of course many other places offering live music — too many to list here.

What I take from all of this is that there should be a concerted (pun intended) effort to brand Baltimore and all of Central Maryland as a hub for live music. The incredibly successful city of Nashville (“Music City”) demonstrates what can happen when a city uses music to brand itself.

According to Business Research Insights, the global live music market is approaching $13 billion in size this year and is expected to reach nearly $20 billion by 2032. This is a segment in which Central Maryland can and should compete. It’s difficult to identify commercial segments that are as joyful, potentially supportive of local artists, additive to quality of life and economically impactful.

Anirban Basu (abasu@sagepolicy.com) is an economist and chairman and CEO of Sage Policy Group.