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META AUDIENCE RESEARCH

by Dave Cross

Generator has commissioned an extensive research programme to find out what prevents people from attending gigs.

There had been lots of opinions, in fact during one small scale project, there were as many reasons confidently given for non-attendance at live music events as there were people being interviewed! And that included the opinions of professional promoters and venue managers.

The time came to design a proper survey into why people don't come to gigs. We wanted to understand the perceptions of live music events by people who clearly like music and who physically have easy access to music events but, when it comes to it, simply don't go to the gigs.

Our intention was not only to learn what the reasons for non-attendance were, but also to present the results in a way that Promoters would find useful - to give them an informed basis for changing their marketing, their venue, their programme, their pricing or whatever, knowing that the reasons for making a change had been thoroughly researched.

Our surveys included focus groups with professionals in the business, focus groups with attenders of other events and interviews with random members of the public. These were carried out between 1999 and 2001 in both urban and rural locations, and with local people, students and people who showed an interest in music in other ways.

The findings are presented on the following three linked pages - they are quite long and detailed reports. You may need to study the tables of data from the interviews quite carefully to extract the particular detail that applies your own work, but we do hope it proves valuable reading. We don't believe there has been any comparable study into why people do NOT attend popular music events, so this might be the first opportunity to study the profile of your audience of the future.

     Part 1 - Focus groups with venue managers and promoters

     Part 2 - Focus groups with audiences (attenders and potential attenders)

     Part 3 - Interviews with non-attenders

Please note that these surveys were carried out in the North of England - some readers elsewhere may not recognise the names of venues, but we believe the perceptions will have a broader application.

This research was undertaken by ScotInform. An established research company based in Edinburgh.

Another report of similar research can be found at www.artscouncil.org.uk/publications/ pdfs/ArtsInEnglandexec02.pdf . Conducted by the Arts Council of England in 2000.

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For further information contact Dave Cross on 0191 224 0088

e-mail mail@generator.org.uk

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