The demographics of music

I live across the street from Park West, a popular Chicago concert venue. It’s just big enough to get big local events and smaller traveling shows, but it’s not big enough to get current big name performers. The capacity is probably around 1,500. I recognize maybe 1 in 6 of the performers that play there, and the venue averages around 4 shows a week. Mandy Moore was there last night, The Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus is performing this Saturday night (an example of a group I’m not familiar with)…followed by Steven Stills of CSNY next week…with Jazz for Youth, Jimmy Eats World, and The Cowboy Junkies coming the week after. There are also several Grateful Dead tribute bands that play there frequently. It’s eclectic, to say the least.

I’ve lived across the street from Park West for nearly a year and I walk by it multiple times every day. The really interesting thing to me is how homogeneous the ages and ethnicities are of the people within each audience and how completely heterogeneous the audiences are from concert to concert. One day I’ll walk out of my building and there will be 75 Asian high-schoolers in front of the place, and the next night there will be lots of white middle-aged couples, and the next night there will be tons of 20-something African Americans. What makes it really striking is that there is generally zero variance within each group. There are no Asian high schoolers in with the baby-boomers, and there are no 20-something African Americans in the group of Asian teens, etc.

I’m guessing part of the reason the groups are so distinct is because the performers are popular enough to go on tour but small enough that they have a core fan base grown largely from word of mouth, not generated from radio play, and some music is ethnic (the Chicago Salsa Festival is next month) or age (Baby Loves Disco is there monthly) specific in nature, etc. At least this explains the bands that are small and “on the way up”. The bands that have been around for a while and are “on the way down” are probably pulling the core fan base that was there for them while they were on the way up. Whatever the case may be, it’s interesting to think about.

Advertisement