Skip to content

Statistical processing

Contact info

Science, Technology and Culture, Business Statistics.
Agnes Tassy
+45 39 17 31 44

ata@dst.dk

Get as PDF

Live music

Data for the statistic of live music are collected annually from KODA,The Agency for Culture and Palaces, the music festivals' websites and Statistics Denmark's own registers. The collected data is examined and cleaned for error observations. Data about the audience appears directly from data for some of the concerts, while it is estimated for the others. The total data about concerts is used to identify the concert organizers.

Source data

The statistics is based on crediting data from KODA, reports from regional venues, regional orchestras and operationally supported music festivals to the Palaces and Culture Agency, as well as manual collection of information about music festivals from the festivals and other relevant websites.

Major music festivals are identified by combining different sources, e.g. Gaffa and Festivalskits. The number of concerts and audiences held is collected manually from the festivals and other relevant websites.

Information about industry, sector, etc. obtained from Statistics Denmark Company Statistics.

Frequency of data collection

Yearly.

Data collection

Statistics Denmark receives administrative data from KODA and the Palaces and Culture Agency. Statistics Denmark itself collects information about the music festivals from the festivals and other relevant websites.

Data validation

The information for major music festivals on the number of concerts and audiences is gathered in a data set (data set 1).

Data from the The Agency for Culture and Palaces on the number of concerts and audiences at regional venues, regional orchestras and operationally supported music festivals are collected and validated in a separate data set (data set 2). Billing data from KODA is cleared of error observations, eg invalid cvr numbers. Invoices relating to events hosted by major music festivals, regional venues, regional orchestras and operating music festivals will be deleted. This is done using data set 1 and data set 2. Invoicing for events held abroad and events held by restaurants is deleted. The latter are identified using relevant item numbers. Billing and crediting data are matched to remove canceled concerts. The ten largest credits that cannot be matched with billing data are examined and matched manually if necessary. The data set with invoices then only consists of invoices for events held.

The number of audiences and concerts is compared with alternative data sources, such as industry reports, music magazines and ticket providers' websites.

Data compilation

Concerts held by regional venues, regional orchestras and operationally supported music festivals are estimated on the basis of annual reports from the concert organizers themselves to the Palaces and Culture Agency. The reports are part of the operating grant executive order and contain information on the number of concerts and audiences held in the calendar year.

Music festivals are identified manually by combining different sources, e.g. Gaffa, Festivalskits og Hudda. Information about the number of concerts and audiences are obtained from relevant websites, eg the festivals' own websites. From 2018 and until 2020, mainly big festivals were registered using the previously named sources. From 2021 the internet search to obtain information on the number of concert and audiences has been extended to cover smaller festivals as well.

The invoices for estimating the number of audiences and concerts are registered under the organizer category from KODA data. This is not the case for the festivals, which are registered and identified manually by combining different e.g. Gaffa and Festivalskits as well as an annual overview of Danish festivals from the Ministry of Culture. From this information about the number of concerts and audiences are identified on relevant websites, eg the festivals' own websites. It may happen that the audience and concerts for smaller festivals as well as one-day festivals can be included in a different category than "Music Festival", as they are arranged by professional organizers as well as other concert organizers, music associations. From 2021 the registration of this type of festivals has expanded significantly, due to greater coverage and media attention. The mention must be seen in the light of a time with COVID-19 and assembly ban, where the opportunity to go to the festival has been limited. In addition, several festival-like events have been held and registered as substitutes for the major canceled festivals. This group of events has in 2021 been registered under ‘Music Festival’, so this may well have a minor downward effect on the other types of organizers, as this type of event may have previously been registered below from the KODA data.

Concerts held by folk churches, cultural centers, music associations, venues, professional concert organizers and other organisers as well as smaller music festivals in the calendar year are estimated on the basis of invoices and credits that KODA has posted during the census year. Data thus relates to both events held in the census year and other years due to delayed and prepaid invoicing. A subset of the invoices contain information about the number of concerts and audiences.

There is a difference in what information the invoices contain: on some of the invoices you can see how many concerts and audiences the invoicing relates to, and on others you cannot. The invoices where the information appears are used to calculate the average KODA fee per. audience pr. concert. By dividing the invoiced amount with the average price per audience, it is possible to estimate the number of audiences for the invoices that do not contain this information. There is a big difference in how much the concert organizers pay per. audience pr. concert. The price depends i.e. of where the concert is held and whether it is free or not. In order to obtain as accurate estimates of the number of audiences as possible, the average KODA remuneration per audience pr. concert for uniform types of concerts for each calendar year.

Number of audiences and concerts is distributed by concert size. If an invoicing includes several concerts, the number of audiences per concert as a simple average. An invoicing for two concerts with 500 spectators will thus be included in the statistics as two concerts under the concert size of 200-499 people. Music festivals are treated differently, as they typically take place over several days, with the same audience participating in several concerts. Here it is assumed that all audiences participate in all concerts, i.e. that number of audiences per. concert is equal to the total number of spectators for the festival. All concerts held at a music festival with 15,000 spectators will thus be included in the statistics under the concert size of 10,000-29,999 people.

The calculation method for calculating audiences and concerts has been continuously improved since the publication of 2018 figures. This has led to minor revisions in the statistics. Revisions include the clarification of the category descriptions for concert organizers and music associations as well as revised figures for individual music festivals. Future revisions may occur as the statistics are still evolving.

After estimating the number of audiences, the KODA dataset is put together with dataset 1 and dataset 2, and the statistics bank tables are formed.

The final data set used to estimate the number of audiences and concerts, and which is described in the section above, contains information on who arranges and / or holds the concerts. The data set is therefore also used to identify the concert organizers, where duplicates are deleted.

Then data is enriched with information as sector, industry and region from Statistics Denmark's Business Register using CVR number . Organizer type appears from KODA data and is adjusted in some cases: Concert organizers are split up into professional concert organizers and other organizers. Professional concert organizers are defined as the concert organizers who appear as private companies under the cultural industry in the Business Register. The remaining concert organizers are defined as other concert organizers.

Adjustment

No data corrections are made beyond what has already been described under data validation and data processing.