Forbes magazine this month put its stamp of approval on on L.A.'s role as one of the world's foremost providers of popular culture.

The problem is that the publication didn't give us nearly enough credit. 

Forbes ranked the 50 largest American metropolitan areas based on how well locals did with crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter. The issue with that became pretty obvious when we saw which city came in first place on this list of “America's Most Creative Cities:”
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San Francisco topped the ranking. Its citizens did well with such crowdfunding sites as Bandcamp (1st place), ReverbNation (2nd), Kickstarter (1st) and Indiegogo (4th).

Half of those companies are based in Northern California (Kickstarter is based in New York and ReverbNation is based in North Carolina), where crowdfunding is a much more integrated part of the tech and creative scenes than it is in other cities.

So, if you ask us, San Francisco had a built-in advantage.

If Forbes gave L.A. a similar head start it would have based these rankings based on how many millionaire douchebags invested in projects for producer credit.

In any case, we made number 7 on this list, beat out by the likes of Nashville (number 3), New York (5) and Portland (6). (Yeah, right!).

Consolation prize: Forbes said we ranked 2nd in Indiegogo fundraising.

Here's how the magazine came up with its list, according to its own explainer: 

To find America’s Most Creative cities, we started with America’s 50 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and Metropolitan Divisions (MSADs), home to half the U.S. population. Then we ranked these places based on four metrics: activity per capita on project-funding platforms Kickstarter and Indiegogo and music sites Bandcamp and ReverbNation. The goal was to capture organic creativity, since many artistic and musical types have “day jobs” outside of creative pursuits.

Sure.

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