2019 Music Industry Trends: The Venue Edition

With summer coming to an end, we wanted to share some of the concert merchandise industry trends year-to-date (through August).

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With over 60,000 shows and $350+ million in merchandise sales through atVenu so far for 2019, what does the data show? Let's dive in!

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TL;DR

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• Avg $/head for the industry continues to grow with 2019 showing an average of $5.50 (+11% to 2018).
• Avg  Gross Sales per show have increased +29% from 2018.
• K-Pop, Pop, and Hard Rock knocked it out of the park as the genres with the top 3 $/head averages.
• The Top Selling Merch Item selling 2x more than any other item is… you guessed it… a Black T-Shirt with the most common sizes tied at M and L
• 90% of everything purchased is merchandise, 10% is music

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Our résumé as to where these numbers and industry insights are coming from:

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Top 15 Genres by Average $/Head

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Top 15 Markets by Average $/Head

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2019 High-Level Artist Trends

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Curious as to where your bands’ merch business stacks up against the industry at large? Below are a few averages across the tens of thousands of shows year to date.

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Most Purchased Item

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And the top selling item? You guessed it, a T-Shirt. An interesting data point to highlight is the average sales price of shirts has increased by $2

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% Items Sold Merchandise vs. Music

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Average $/Head & Gross Sales by Attendance Grouping

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Year to date, average $/Head increased by 11% and average Gross Sales increased by 29% from 2018. The biggest trend bucking change is the 10-15K attendance grouping which experienced higher averages than 15-20K. 10-15K shows this year were dominated by Pop & Rap artists who all produced higher avg. gross sales than the 15-20K grouping which was primarily Country artists.

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Check out our year end analysis and insights on music merchandise and see how you can maximize your sales while on tour.