Music might feel like a commodity these days. If you’re able to connect to the internet it’s likely that you can get an instantaneous fix of your favourite tracks with a short search and click of a play button.
But there’s one form of music that is still not as accessible, and all the more valuable for it: live concerts.
So, to understand how live music spreads around the world, I looked at an eclectic sample of 500+ musician’s touring habits on setlist.fm.
To give you a sense of the artists I’ve looked at, here are the ones who’ve visited the most countries by year.
With apologies to Joss Stone, who wins countries toured hands down (despite that final setback), here’s how far and wide all other artists have toured based on which decade they started their career in.
How the West Was Won
But to really understand how live music is changing around the world, we have to look at individual countries.
To start here are some of the obvious countries.
(Also a great excuse to show you how to read the charts).
From the 30s to the 1950s, the early musical superstars visited most of the big concert destinations.
Rock & Regimes
Both South America and the Iberian Peninsula saw the rise and fall of dictators coincide with the spread of rock and pop.
While most of these countries saw some artists play relatively early on, it wasn’t until after their respective regimes where toppled that they became the concert tour powerhouses that they are today.
Solos
Sometimes a single tour can start opening up countries to the rest of the world. In 1973 Santana was the first big international star to play most of Central America.
Some of these countries haven’t taken off as concert destinations in the same way some of the South American countries have. But credit should go to Santana for leading the way, and Shakira for following that lead a couple of decades later.
What Santana seems to have done for Central America, Status Quo seem to have done for the Middle East.
On the whole, most of these countries see bands that have been around for a while. But with a huge international working population, it’s unsurprising to see the UAE become a major hub for concerts in the region.
Africa
Other than South Africa, the rest of the African continent has seen fewer musicians appear over the years.
With newer acts like Jay-Z, Akon, Chris Brown and Nicki Minaj showing an interest in playing in the region it seems inevitable that things will change.
Back in the USSR
The breakup of the USSR changed the international music touring scene in ex-Soviet countries.
Estonia and Latvia have become serious music destinations in their own right, but others, like Georgia and Azerbaijan have certainly gained some momentum in a short period of time.
The biggest countries…
It is fascinating however, that only a few of the worlds biggest countries are getting in on the act in a serious way.
Wham! playing in China in 1985 was a big deal. But gigs are becoming more common (despite China having a strained relationship with artists like Björk, Oasis and Jay-Z).
Despite being the second most populous country on the planet, India has seen few international big acts. The challenges in bringing artists vary from quality of venues, to red tape, to pricing.
While not the as huge in terms of population, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia are well established on the touring scene these days.
…and the smallest countries
In contrast to the population-behemoths of the world, small countries seem to be very popular with musicians.
And the rest….
Of course, it would be a tragedy not to mention some of the other pioneers in this space.
The Jazz Ambassadors in the 1950s, who played in Iran (among many other countries), making them the last western musical acts to play there for a long time.
Metallica in Antarctica. Presumably because it has a ring to it.
And my personal favourite: any band playing North Korea for the first time would have been newsworthy. But Slovenian art-rockers Laibach taking the honours elevates the whole concert into something well-beyond mere gigging.
Methodology & Caveats:
All data is from https://www.setlist.fm/ via their API. The 542 artists I looked at were based on a mix of best-selling tours, looking through charts and (for better or for worse) my own editorial judgments. There does seem to be a bias towards better quality data for English-speaking bands – for example, looking for Serge Gainsbourg returns a very limited number of concerts. Contrast that with The Beach Boys.
Artist images via the Spotify API and Wikimedia Commons.
All data processed and plotted in R, using the following packages: Tidyverse, ggfittext, extrafont, gganimate, and ggimage.