Rock is US' most popular music genre, but listeners attend gigs less frequently than other fans

Nearly half of all Americans say Rock music is one of their favorite genres of music (48%), putting it well ahead of pop music (40%). In turn, pop music has a comfortable lead over country (33%), R&B (33%) and rap or hip-hop (30%). But do fans of these genres attend music gigs at the same frequency?

While shares are similar across genres, differences do exist. Rap or hip-hop fans are among the most likely to fill up arenas or stadiums at a high frequency – 14% of them say they attend a gig at least once a quarter. By contrast, only 9% of rock fans indicate the same. Country (12%), pop (11%) and R&B (11%) are about as likely as one another to attend gigs at least once per quarter.

Beyond that, a quarter of fans across all genres (24% to 26%) say they attend between once to three times each year.

And while Rock fans are the least likely to attend super regularly, they are also among the least likely to say that they never attend (37%). This is because a relatively higher share of them say that they attend gigs less than once a year (28%). Fans of R&B (42%) and country (41%) are somewhat more inclined towards staying away from gigs altogether.

But how much of a factor does the age of fans play? Our data shows that younger fans are generally more likely to attend music gigs in arenas and stadiums, so it’s interesting to look at a comparison of young fans across the specific genres.

The first thing to note is that younger fans – those aged 18-29 – are markedly more likely to frequent music gigs, be they fans of country music or hip-hop. But the degree of the variance varies. For instance, young fans of country music are nearly two times as likely as all fans to attend music gigs once or more every quarter (23% vs 12%).

Like Rock fans in general, those aged 18-29, are least likely to attend frequently (15%).

A fifth of young fans of rap or hip-hop (20%), R&B (19%) and pop (18%) say they attend gigs once or more each quarter. Young R&B fans are the second-most likely, after country fans, to attend at least once each year (51%), sending rap or hip-hop (46%) to the third place in this regard.

Methodology: YouGov Profiles is based on continuously collected data and rolling surveys, rather than from a single limited questionnaire. Profiles data for the US is nationally representative of the online population and weighted by age, gender, education, region, and race. Learn more about Profiles.