The second annaul Live Music Census conducted by Music Victoria has found that the live music scene in Melbourne not only healthy, but floursihing, and has crowned the city as the live music capital of the world.
The census looked at a range of factors pertaining to the health of live music in Victoria, addressing everything from number of venues to attendance, dollar value, safety and inclusion, and the audience share compared to other recreational activities.
The second annual Live Music Census conducted by Music Victoria has found that Melbourne is the live music capital of the world.
The study found that Melbourne has one live music venue per 9,503 residents – by comparison Sydney has 89 venues (one per 51,000 residents), London has 245 venues (one per 34,350 residents), New York has 453 venues (one per 18,554 residents) and Los Angeles 510 venues (one per 19,607 residents) – making Melbourne the “live music capital of the world”.
Live music events had a total attendance of 17.5 million in 2017 – an increase of 12 percent from 15.6 million in 2012. 55 percent of live music venues reported that their audience had increased in the past 12 month.
“It’s fantastic to see that Melbourne has grown as a live music city in the past five years. While the number of regular gigs is about the same, we’ve bucked global trends of a declining live music scene,” says Music Victoria CEO Patrick Donovan.
“The number of gigs and audiences are growing, as well as the number of part time live music venues, which is consistent with the popularity of live music at non-traditional venues, such as sporting events, and at institutions such as the NGV, the Melbourne Zoo and Melbourne Museum.”
The stats also revealed that live music attracted more attendance than the AFL, Spring Racing Carnival, A-League, Basketball, Netball, NRL, Cricket and the Australian Grand Prix combined. Pretty insane.
Read a summary of the census here, and check out the enitre thing here.
