Songkick posted this chart on their blog and it confirms something I’ve known since I moved to Austin: it’s one rockin’ little city.
The biggest surprise: no New York City.
We analyzed rock shows per capita in 2010–where rock includes everything from emo to indie. We hope you’ll agree that the list is surprising. Austin really earns its title of live-music capital of the world. It’s also nice to see Denver, Seattle, Portland, and Nashville on the list, since our hunch was that they’re hotbeds of good live music. (If our lean start-up nerdery has taught us anything, it’s measure measure measure and validate assumptions… Pity the fool who doesn’t use metrics.) The average rock show ticket prices are surprising too. Who knew it was so expensive to see a rock concert in Las Vegas?
To compute the Rock Score, Songkick analyzed its database of more than 1.8 million concerts for rock artists’ 2010 tour dates, where rock includes alternative, indie, punk, classic rock, metal, emo, and rock. Songkick analyzed which cities have the most rock concerts per capita, giving the top city, Austin, a score of 100. All other cities are then ranked against this score—Madison has 78% as many rock concerts per capita as Austin, New Orleans 57%, and so on.
The ten most rocking cities in the U.S. by number of live rock shows per capita include:
• Austin, Texas – 100 Rock Score; average ticket price of $23.30
• Madison, Wisconsin – 78 Rock Score; average ticket price of $13.05
• New Orleans, Louisiana – 57 Rock Score; average ticket price of $16.89
• Las Vegas, Nevada – 51 Rock Score; average ticket price of $62.76
• Denver, Colorado – 44 Rock Score; average ticket price of $33.24
• Milwaukee, Wisconsin – 38 Rock Score; average ticket price of $17.66
• The Twin Cities Minneapolis – 36 Rock Score; average ticket price of $11.36
• Seattle, Washington – 35 Rock Score; average ticket price of $11.75
• Portland, Oregon – 35 Rock Score; average ticket price of $10.33
• Nashville, Tennessee – 34 Rock Score; average ticket price of $20.13