Mapping Concert Locations

June 17, 2011 12:12 PM

What are some good Web resources for finding cities with the highest number of concert venues? I would prefer it be cheap/free and specific enough to show even very small clubs. I would also like it to be in a map format, if possible.
posted by Buttons to grab bag (4 answers total)

The bigger the population, the greater the number of venues. Here are America's top 4:
New York City
Los Angeles
Chicago
Houston

Best of luck!
posted by Renoroc at 12:51 PM on June 17, 2011

Songkick offers an API to developers. I am not sure about Pollstar. Having combed over both, each has shown me some very tiny venues indeed. My guess is you would have to pull the data from the API and construct a map based on that.

You will also have to ask, "What is a city?" That is, what are the geographic bounds of a city? If I look on Pollstar for St. Louis, I am offered a concerts over at Pops, which is out in Sauget, Illinois. Most people from St. Louis will visit Pops for a show. Is that a "city"? You could use a radius (though you still would have to select a geographic center) or use a clustering algorithm, like k-means, to find the clusters (cities) for you.

Finally, how many cities do you want? Top five? Top hundred?
posted by adipocere at 1:07 PM on June 17, 2011

It also seems to help to look for areas where there's a fairly high density of cities. I live in Albuquerque, and despite having a university and a decent-sized population, we appear to be a flyover city for most of the bands I like. I suspect it's because, aside from Santa Fe, there's basically nothing for hundreds of miles around us, so it's probably not very cost-effective to come out here, unless you're a stadium/casino act or a regional band.
posted by Pants McCracky at 2:14 PM on June 17, 2011

We have an API over at SonicLiving as well. Ping me if you want help with queries.
posted by judith at 4:22 PM on June 17, 2011