Music Data Decoded: The live music data puzzle

By:Cherie HuMaarten Walraven

Published:2024-10-30

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:

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:

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.

The ticket: The epicenter of live music data

Any conversation about data in live music starts with the core action of buying a ticket.

Far beyond a surface-level stream or social media engagement, a ticket purchase signals a fan’s commitment to see and support an artist on a deeper level. As Henry Lu, Co-Founder/Owner of Los Angeles-based event promoter Space Yacht, explains: 

“For live events, the most important point of sale is simply the ticket to the live event. I live by the idea that the ticket is the gateway to everything else. That's not to diminish the importance of ancillary POS [points of sale]. The concertgoer can sometimes spend more on ancillaries (eg. parking, merch, music, food & beverage, etc.) than the ticket itself, but a lot of it doesn't happen without the initial ticket sale.”

In other words, the ticket serves as a container — embodying both the expression of fandom and the potential for additional touchpoints that generate value for artists, fans, and even cities hosting these events.

The fragmentation problem

From that initial ticket sale, a broad network of stakeholders — and subsequent data silos — springs into action.

Due to a combination of privacy laws, platform gatekeeping, and the industry’s endemic structure, there are multiple layers of fragmentation at play in live music data. Sales data is splintered across “hundreds of ticketing platforms globally,” as Diana Gremore, Founder/CEO of ticketing analytics platform RealCount, tells us. Because of exclusive relationships between ticketing companies and venues or promoters, differences in regional market share, and software tailored to specific types of shows (e.g., festivals vs. club events), a single artist team likely needs to track several different ticketing platforms for even a small tour.

Moreover, each stakeholder in live music generates and focuses on different datasets. Ticketing companies typically focus on core sales metrics and conversions; venues and promoters hold valuable data on regional attendance patterns and onsite purchases; managers and artists triangulate their own audience and fan data across dozens of different sources to predict show demand.

Even within a single ticketing platform, different teams have different data priorities, much of which extends beyond ticket sales. As the team at DICE shared with us:

“What’s ‘crucial’ depends on the perspective of different teams. For example, our Account Management team (who manage our partnerships with venues, promoters and festivals) would want to look at data around fan happiness (customer satisfaction), DICE attribution (DICE-powered transactions), marketing campaign performance, ticket sales, event views, and conversion rates with partners and venues.In terms of customer engagement, it is important to understand fan behavior and identify triggers that encourage repeat purchases, which helps retain fans and build a strong community.”

Live music stakeholders tend to guard their information closely — a rational choice in a low-margin business, where data itself becomes a valuable asset. But if unaddressed, this fragmentation creates tangible consequences: Artists can't optimize their touring strategies, venues struggle to predict demand, and fans face an increasingly frustrating ticket-buying experience.

The case for greater data sharing

Yet, there’s room for optimism. Recognizing live music as a crucial part of the broader artist-fan ecosystem, some industry leaders see a trend toward more openness, especially to bring value back to the artists themselves.

“Sharing info with the artists whose name is usually responsible for selling the ticket is important,” Gremore tells us. “When you give people access to their data, they'll use it to make smarter decisions. It’s a win for everyone — artists, venues, ticketing companies.”

Gremore draws a parallel with artist-facing streaming dashboards like Spotify for Artists, which have empowered artists and their teams to make better decisions by providing access to streaming data. “The key is recognizing that when you provide access to data, people will use it, and it benefits the entire ecosystem,” she says.

Tersha Willis, Co-Founder/CEO of full-service merchandising company terrible*, echoes this sentiment:

“GDPR obviously looms large here, but I think there’s already a lot of collaboration at a high level between ticketers, labels and artists, especially around key releases. It’s important to remember the absolute purpose for this data, which we believe should be to improve artists’ offering and commercial opportunities.”

Risk-taking in early stages

When it comes to strategy, the most successful players in live music find ways to balance analytics with instinct — or, more specifically, pattern recognition with an appetite for risk.

Before tickets go on sale, gigs and tours need to be planned. This process is inherently risky, especially for emerging acts lacking extensive streaming data or touring history.

Hence, early-stage artist development in live music still relies heavily on human judgment. “We use data to support our cause,” Andy Halliday, booking agent at Earth Agency, tells us, but early-stage decisions around signing and developing touring acts relies heavily on the "visceral experience of music rather than straight-up data.”

In a similar vein, Lu notes that while data can contextualize and reinforce the initial spark of enthusiasm around an artist, it cannot replace human intuition:

“We at Space Yacht put great importance in the modern producer-DJ, in that the best bookings are in the artists who not only have great performance skills but also produce music that connects. While we don't use any software tools to track listenership, we do pay attention to Spotify monthlies, social engagement, and DJ support.

We also spend a lot of time on the next-up of artists, which often don't come with a full data stream. Artist discovery here feels much more like ‘placing clever bets’ than ‘data-backed bookings.’ At this stage it's hard to really track down DJ support, and I'm hoping the next generation of metadata sharing will bring clarity to people like me.”

By “metadata,” Lu is referring to information about who is playing an artist's tracks and where, which is becoming increasingly influential in booking decisions. Startups like Vollou and Seeqnc are developing technology to track music played in clubs and other venues. (Aslice, a revenue-sharing platform in this vertical that enabled DJs to directly compensate producers whose tracks they played, is shutting down at the end of 2024.)

Live data is fan data

In today’s fast-changing landscape, live music analytics now extend far beyond basic sales metrics. Promoters, agents, and venues seek whatever information they can to assess their market potential and minimize financial risk. As more data becomes accessible, new markets are also opening up for artists and fans to connect in a live setting, especially catering to specific musical interests or demographics.

Across the board, our interviewees emphasized that live data is essentially fan data. Understanding fan behavior helps the live music industry make informed decisions — whether this involves artists aiming to build lasting relationships with their audience, or venues and promoters looking to understand what kind of music resonates in specific markets. We can look at the relationship between live and fan engagement like a power plug into a socket — live feeds off the fans’ energy.

Capitalizing on the revenue opportunities that come from more sophisticated analytics requires not just access to data, but the ability to interpret and act on it effectively. It's about bringing that gut feeling and those “clever bets” into context.

Top-of-funnel: Discovery and awareness

It all starts with discovery: Fans need to know that an artist is performing near them.

One approach is to lean on the power of recommendation algorithms to drive discovery. In some cases, DSPs like Spotify are increasingly integrating touring information into artist profiles. More natively, DICE employs its own powerful recommendation engine, blending both streaming and event attendance data:

Our bespoke recommendation engine connects fans' listening habits with live event suggestions. The engine uses algorithms based on music preferences, past event attendance, and engagement metrics to recommend events fans are likely to enjoy, increasing the likelihood of repeat purchases.

Over 40% of our sales come via discovery.

At the other end of the spectrum, many promoters like Lu and Space Yacht pride themselves on being early market movers, so that they can keep pushing the envelope and helping their artists find new audiences. The caveat with this approach is that they rely on custom spreadsheets to pull their data together — a labor-intensive process also indicated by 60% of the respondents in our original State of Data survey.

While spreadsheets and other generic tools are not purpose-built for the music business, they are popular in part because they allow for maximum flexibility in executing on bespoke fan engagement strategies. As Lu notes:

“While most of the platforms I use have built-in insights, some of our marketing practices are so unorthodox that we have to manually keep tabs on our own spreadsheets. We are often the first adopters of the latest software, which doesn't come with many options for integration and interoperability. We thrive on first-mover marketing playbooks, and the consequence is that data insights have to be done manually.”

Long-term engagement

From discovery, the next step is to build and sustain long-term relationships with ticket buyers.

As we highlighted in our last article, fans are not a monolith, and segmenting them by live event engagement can — and should — get very granular. “Purchasing behavior … definitely varies by artist, market, or genre,” says Gremore. “Knowing the patterns of if and when tickets are moving gives our users an edge.”

One trend the DICE team is excited about is "the use of advanced analytics to enhance audience engagement and micro-personalization." They explain:

“Whilst sentiment is a hugely positive indicator, behavior is essential — and we offer our partners ways to understand this themselves. We can demonstrate how many fans return to the same venue, which marketing channels they typically use, and demographic information. This allows [partners] to tailor their marketing and approach towards the sorts of fans that are more likely to return again.”

This fan-by-fan understanding aligns with our previous discussions on personalized fan engagement. It's about processing vast amounts of data to uncover purchasing behaviors and, more importantly, repeat-purchasing behaviors, to create stronger, long-term relationships between artists and fans.

Another frontier in live music data involves understanding the myriad other kinds of data available apart from ticket sales that can help strengthen a show or tour’s performance. 

The data points Halliday and Earth Agency consider in their tour planning range from the standard streaming and social metrics to much broader cultural nuances around “aesthetics, narrative, and politics.” In a similar vein, RealCount's new strategic partnership with Chartmetric allows RealCount users to juxtapose their ticket sales with additional data points around fandom, including both streaming and social activity. Connecting this diverse range of datasets to reveal actionable patterns is where a strong music data strategy truly shines.

Merch and other ancillary sales

Beyond tour planning, data helps teams prepare for ancillary revenue opportunities like merchandise sales.

Willis sees merch as “the very last thing that can make an artist money — everything else is already decided, agreed, and tied up.” MIDiA Research recently projected that the global music merch market will reach $16.3 billion by 2030. That said, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the market is under 3% — reflecting a maturing merch industry where success will hinge on nurturing authentic fan relationships, rather than treating merch as a pure revenue play.

This is where, once again, data on repeat engagement from fans also becomes a top priority. As Willis explains:

“We collect our own sales data from shows across the regions and genres we work in, allowing us to have more accurate projections for sales of artist merchandise.Artists who visit the same venues or cities and have similar fans in similar time frames greatly benefit from this. It allows them to have the right products, at the right price and in the right sizes and volume — which generally means better performance and better outcomes.”

Closing note

In a business drowning in metrics, it's worth stepping back to remember what we're actually measuring: Fans choosing to spend their nights (and their money) on live music experiences.

While the industry grapples with data fragmentation and rising costs, the most crucial shift isn't just about building better dashboards or breaking down silos — it's about developing a sharper understanding of the humans behind every ticket sale, merch purchase, and venue check-in.

As margins stay tight and competition intensifies, the companies that thrive in live will be those that can translate their mountain of data into genuine insights about fan behavior and motivation, then act on those insights in ways that create real value for both artists and audiences.

Revisit Water & Music’s previous research on live music and merch: