Houston: Concert City
Houston rocks among U.S. cities with the most passionate music fans
For those H-Towners about to rock, we salute you. Houston is home to the fifth-most passionate live music fanbase, according to a newly published study by ticket sales platform, SeatGeek.
The platform named the cities where people are most interested in purchasing a concert ticket when an artist they like is coming to town. The site analyzed anonymous data up to March 2018 to see which live music artists and genres people are tracking. The top 50 cities in the U.S. are included and the study referenced the 100 most popular artists on SeatGeek. (SeatGeek users can track any artist, sports team, or event and be notified when they will be coming to town ahead of time so they won't miss out on tickets.)
The Bayou City comes in behind Oklahoma City, which ranked No. 1. Salt Lake City ranked No. 2, Denver No. 3, and Las Vegas No. 4. Oklahoma City music fans track 20.8 live music events per person, while Houstonians track 20.1.
Hip-hop, a vital part of the Houston scene, takes the trophy for most loved genre in the city with 47 percent of users preferring the genre, with pop coming in second (21 percent), and R&B and country coming in a distant third-place tie (11 percent).
Not to be outdone, Dallas-Fort Worth comes in seventh place with 19.9 music tracks per person. Dallas-Fort Worth follows a similar path as Houston, with 45 percent of fans tracking hip-hop, 22 percent loving pop artists, and 12 percent following country artists.
As for favorite artists, Texas takes pride in Miranda Lambert, as the Lindale native takes top spot in both Houston and Dallas. Even though country doesn't score very well overall in Houston, seven of the 10 top artists tracked by fans in the city are country stars, including Brad Paisley in second, Blake Shelton in third, Tim McGraw in fourth, Luke Bryan in fifth, Jason Aldean in sixth, and Keith Urban in eighth place. Travis Scott (No. 7), Shakira (No. 9), and Kodak Black (No. 10), rounded up the non-country faves in the city.
All 10 of Dallas' favorite artists come from the country world, despite the genre tracking among only 12 percent of SeatGeek's users. Shelton (No. 2), Paisley (No. 3), McGraw (No. 4), and Aldean (No. 5) listed as the most popular.
Houston’s placement in the results isn’t too much of a shock when one takes into account the hugely diverse sounds emanating from the fourth largest metropolitan area in the United States. This is a city that draws several major festivals and events each year — here’s looking at you, Day for Night, In Bloom, and RodeoHouston — as well as a smorgasbord of concert offerings almost daily across multiple genres and different sized venues.