Rapper Mos Def, former Pixies singer Frank Black, and British rockers Franz Ferdinand have one thing in common aside from music – the Brooklyn neighborhood known as DUMBO.

The waterfront district, which stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, is a veritable petri dish of record labels reproducing and multiplying, doubling their number to 17 in the past two years.

Two factors are driving this trend: the availability of industrial space at affordable prices and a city incentive that gives tax credits to business that relocate within New York.

“We have seen some smaller indie labels moving to DUMBO, but it has consistently been with a mind toward cost savings,” said real estate broker Brian Waterman of Newmark.

The average cost for commercial space in DUMBO ranges from $15 to $22 a square foot, according to Two Trees Management, the largest developer in the neighborhood. The average price for office space in Manhattan was nearly $40 a square foot in the second quarter, according to commercial real estate firm Newmark.

Centaur Music, which received a Grammy Award nomination for a Boy George song, and has signed artists like Elton John and Donna Summer, relocated from Chelsea last June.

The move halved the company’s monthly rent, said the company’s director of marketing, Jamie Baxter. In addition to the cheaper neighborhood, the company took advantage of the city’s Relocation and Employment Assistance Program, which offers a $3,000 tax credit per employee for companies that move from outside the city or from Manhattan below 96th Street, to Manhattan above 96th Street or an outer borough.

DUMBO “was very inviting, there is all this space here and there is less noise – it is a fresher environment than Manhattan,” Mr. Baxter said.

“This is one of the last places to still get a lot of space with relatively cheap rent,” said the co-owner of spinART, Joel Morowitz, who moved his record company to the neighborhood last September. spinART, which has signed Frank Black and the Catholics and the indie band The Apples in Stereo, was originally located in SoHo, and later moved to Staten Island, before finding a 2,700-square-foot space at 20 Jay St.

“This area is basically a haven for creative media, it’s like Williamsburg was a few years ago,” Mr. Morowitz said.

“Getting office space is like making a housing decision – you care about the neighborhood. Artists love this area because there is a great creative atmosphere,” said Chris Havens, the director of leasing at Two Trees.

London-based Domino Records, which represents musicians as disparate as Silver Jews and The Kills, has also opened up shop in the area. The company had rented offices in the West Village, but the Brooklyn neighborhood was “considerably more afford able, about 67% less in monthly rent,” said the company’s general manager in North America, Chris Gillespie.

It is not just record companies who are drawn to DUMBO. Recording studios, DJ shops, record stores, and other facets of the music industry have also been gravitating toward the neighborhood.

“It just keeps growing and we are getting more and more musicians down here,” James Marino, who manages the Atomic Recording Company, said of the neighborhood.

Turntable Lab, which sells DJ equipment, moved into the neighborhood from Williamsburg, where landlords “started dividing up the warehouse spaces into smaller offices, and it just got too expensive,” co-owner Jasper Goggins said.

Mr. Goggins’s company keeps its inventory of records, clothes, and turntables on site, and needs a large office. The rent on its 4,000-square-foot space in DUMBO is 30% less than the company was paying before.

“DUMBO has the infrastructure that Williamsburg lacks,” Mr. Goggins said. “There are delis, FedEx places, and whereas in Williamsburg, people were just hanging out in cafes all day, people here are serious about their careers.”