Music Data Decoded: The live music data puzzle

This article is the third installment in Music Data Decoded, a follow-up series to our State of Data in the Music Industry report.

In this members-only series, we dive into the role that data strategy plays across different industry verticals, to uncover more sector-specific insights and keep the conversation going beyond our original report in a more focused, nuanced manner. Each installment features perspectives from a hand-curated slate of industry executives, many of whom nominated themselves for an interview in our original State of Data survey.

Revisit the first two installments in our series below:

• The new role of music distributors
• How fan-first marketing actually works

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As we approach the end of 2024, the live music business is facing unprecedented commercial pressures.

On one side, the financial value of live events seems to be at an all-time high. Ticket prices continue to skyrocket on both the primary and secondary markets. Cities are competing on multimillion-dollar incentives to attract tours from superstars like Taylor Swift and Coldplay. Private equity firms are pouring billions into festivals, highlighted by KKR’s acquisition of Superstruct Entertainment and Frontier Growth’s $30 million growth investment in atVenu.

Yet, many artists still struggle to make touring profitable. The global festival circuit faces its biggest crisis in years, with dozens of events canceled across the US, UK, and Europe in 2024 alone. And while streaming numbers and social media metrics flood in by the second, the most valuable information about live music fans — who's actually showing up and paying for live shows, and why — often remains siloed and inaccessible.

In our original State of Data in the Music Industry survey, live music data ranked highly on respondents’ "data wishlists.” Several platforms like DICE, Bandsintown, RealCount, KYD Labs, and Audience Republic are working to meet industry demand for better live music data, bringing the sophisticated analytics we expect in music consumption to event ticketing and discovery.

At the same time, the path to effective, data-led live strategies is ultimately more nuanced than just accumulating more information. After all, a lot of the live data people want already exists across hundreds of different ticketing, ecommerce, and social platforms around the world. (For the purposes of this discussion, “live music data” encompasses all trackable metrics and information generated before, during, and after live performances, including ticket sales and pricing, venue capacity and attendance, merch revenue, artist routing, audience demographics and behavior, venue operations, and historical performance data.)

It’s about making this data less fragmented and more actionable — while not forgetting the spontaneity and creative magic that make concerts so loved around the world.

To explore this dynamic further, we interviewed several leaders in live music and tech, many of whom nominated themselves for an interview in our original State of Data survey:

• DICE: Russ Tannen, President; Miranda Chong, Head of Data; Greg Moore, Senior Data Analyst
• Earth Agency: Andy Halliday, Booking Agent
• RealCount: Diana Gremore, Co-Founder/CEO
• Space Yacht: Henry Lu, Co-Founder/Owner
• terrible*: Tersha Willis, Co-Founder/CEO

What follows is a deep dive into how key players across the live music ecosystem think about data — and what a future might look like where information flows more freely between artists, venues, promoters, and most importantly, fans.

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