The results of a new survey prove promising for Australia’s music scene, finding a boom in live music attendance across all venues this year.
A new survey has revealed the music listening habits of Australians, highlighting the general population’s tastes in genre, live music, streaming and more. The results of the survey were released today (December 19), after being conducted on 2,000 respondents throughout the year by the Victorian Music Development Office. On the whole, the study revealed that music is more important to Australian listeners than pre-pandemic figures, results that bled into increased music purchasing and live event attendance.
37% of respondents said that music is their “life and number one passion”, an increase of 5% from the 2019 results. The passion seemingly extended to the size of crowds at live gigs, concerts and festivals, with the survey revealing that attendance to these events has increased greatly over the past few years. According to Jas Moore — director of Victorian Music Office — the results prove that “there doesn’t appear to be any reservation for music fans to be in large crowds.”
While all the music venues sampled — including theatres, bars and mid-size concert halls — enjoyed a boom in attendance, it was stadiums and arenas that saw the biggest jump, with 18% of respondents saying they’d visited these larger-scale music venues at least a few times this year — five times the amount of stadium-goers than in 2019. In addition to a live music boom, the survey revealed that Australia’s passion for music this year extended into a variety of digital platforms.
70% of listeners aged 35 or under said that finding new music is important to them, with YouTube emerging as the most popular digital avenue in doing so. Commercial radio, streaming services and social media in terms of new music discovery, with Facebook, Instagram and TikTok occupying the most popular channels in the lattermost category. Moore said these results indicated an “increased enthusiasm for music” in Australia, and sought to identify exactly what types of music listeners enjoyed the most this year.
Pop music reigned supreme this year, with 20% of Australians claiming it as their favourite genre. Indie rock and country music followed closely behind with 13% and 11% respectively, while hip-hop and rap placed last with 7%. On the whole, Australians are enjoying these genres for much longer intervals, with the survey revealing that all demographics listen to at least 1.5 hours of music every day.
Those aged 35 or under have the longest playlists, recording some 2.5 hours of listening per day. Of that group, 15% said they listen to music for more than four hours every day, an increase from the 10% who recorded that length in 2019. Speaking of the promising survey results, Moore said “these new insights highlight [listeners] potential to engage deeper with music across Australia.”
