This Is the Best City for Live Music

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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This Is the Best City for Live Music

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The COVID-19 pandemic shut down most events that included large numbers of people in venues that were both inside and outside. As more people become vaccinated, this has started to change. Some bands and singers continue to delay or call off tours because of the pandemic. Genesis delayed several dates because some band members had been infected by the virus. The Dave Matthews Band canceled an appearance because of poor “safety protocols.”

Cancellations are such a major problem that “Live for the Music” has a concert cancellation tracker.
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The cancellations aside, Money.co.uk has pulled together a Live Music Hotspots research report. Its study looked at 30 destinations, and one of the primary reasons for the study was:

The live music industry really suffered as a result of the pandemic, with most venues around the world closing their doors and festivals postponed for years on end, but as the world begins to open up again, fans are eager to see their favourite musicians.

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Cities were ranked on several criteria, including the numbers of music venues, upcoming concerts and major music festivals in each city, as well as “artists and bands” from the city.

The list of the top locations is dominated by U.S. cities. Of the top 10, six are in America: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta and Austin.

However, the number one city was not in America. London topped all other cities. It dominated the category of upcoming concerts with 5,088. Most of the other top 10 had fewer than 2,000.

These are the top 10 cities for live music:

City Population Upcoming concerts
London 8,961,989 5,088
New York City 8,804,190 3,267
Los Angeles 3,898,747 3,003
Chicago 2,746,388 1,992
San Francisco 873,965 1,915
Toronto 2,731,571 615
Paris 2,175,601 3,105
Atlanta 498,715 1,405
Austin 961,855 998
Berlin 3,664,088 2,254

Click here to see which are the 50 most popular rock bands of all time.
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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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