Every summer, many look forward to barbecues, beachside activities and concerts.
From full-blown music festivals to intimate café gigs, there are boundless opportunities to listen to your favorite artists and take advantage of the busy touring season.
But there are some cities where good music can be found year-round — cities that artists can’t get enough of. These concert meccas boast unparalleled music scenes and are the envy of the quiet suburbs.
Using data from Songkick and Last.fm, PrettyFamous, part of the Graphiq network, found the 50 concert capitals of the U.S.
To do so, they looked at all concerts by the 6,000 most popular artists on Last.fm in the past year (May 1, 2015-April 30 2016) in each city. Then, they took a weighted average of the number of venues per 100,000 people, average number of shows per venue and total number of shows in each city, both from that same time period. They didn’t include areas with a population under 100K people or fewer than five venues. Ties go to the city with a higher total number of concerts.
#10. Seattle, Washington
Concert Score: 84.13
Number of concerts in the past year: 1108
Concerts per venue: 17
Venues per capita: 10.19
Population: 637,850
#9. Austin, Texas
Concert Score: 84.4
Number of concerts in the past year: 1072
Concerts per venue: 8
Venues per capita: 14.58
Population: 864,218
#8. Chicago, Illinois
Concert Score: 84.71
Number of concerts in the past year: 1974
Concerts per venue: 14
Venues per capita: 5.09
Population: 2,712,608
#7. Atlanta, Georgia
Concert Score: 85.23
Number of concerts in the past year: 1065
Concerts per venue: 20
Venues per capita: 11.80
Population: 440,641
#6. Los Angeles, California
Concert Score: 85.27
Number of concerts in the past year: 2242
Concerts per venue: 14
Venues per capita: 3.96
Population: 3,862,210
#5. Salt Lake City, Utah
Concert Score: 85.63
Number of concerts in the past year: 527
Concerts per venue: 13
Venues per capita: 20.08
Population: 189,267
#4. San Francisco, California
Concert Score: 86.04
Number of concerts in the past year: 1559
Concerts per venue: 19
Venues per capita: 9.65
Population: 829,072
#3. Santa Ana, California
Concert Score: 89.39
Number of concerts in the past year: 493
Concerts per venue: 82
Venues per capita: 1.81
Population: 331,266
#2. New York City, New York
Concert Score: 90.34
Number of concerts in the past year: 3653
Concerts per venue: 13
Venues per capita: 3.12
Population: 8,354,889
#1. Paradise, Nevada
Concert Score: 100
Number of concerts in the past year: 2066
Concerts per venue: 29
Venues per capita: 31.81
Population: 223,182
