Topic hub
Venues
The rooms that carry the circuit — capacity, margin, closures and replacement.
Overview
Small and mid-size venues are the development infrastructure of live music, and they are the most exposed part of the sector to rent, energy and insurance costs.
We track venue supply as an inventory problem: what capacity exists in a market, what is lost, and what replaces it.
Research on venues
Music Is Infrastructure
Live music is usually discussed as entertainment consumption. A more complete economic account treats venues, festivals and performance networks as…
How Consolidation Changed the Concert Business
The modern concert industry did not consolidate simply because large firms wanted to become larger. Venue control, ticketing, sponsorship, artist…
The Economics of the Ticket Fee
A service fee looks like a surcharge added at checkout, but the economics behind it can include venue revenue, ticketing compensation, rebates, payment…
Independence Is an Infrastructure Problem
Independent live music cannot compete sustainably through taste and local identity alone. The missing variable is often shared infrastructure: capital,…
The Independent Venue Paradox
Independent stages can create large spillover benefits for neighborhoods, workers and local businesses while retaining too little of that value to remain…
The Venue Ladder
A city's live-music capacity is not adequately described by the number of venues it contains. Artist development depends on a sequence of economically…
Professionalization Without Homogenization
Independent culture is often forced into a false choice between operational competence and local character. Shared standards can reduce preventable…
Grassroots venue loss is an inventory problem, not a news cycle
Why counting venue closures misses the point, and how a room-level capacity inventory changes what the data can tell cities.