How Much Live Music is Too Much Live Music?
In almost every city, you’ll hear the same conversation: “There’s so much live music happening right now.” New venues pop up, restaurants add stages, and artists often find themselves playing multiple shows a week within a small radius. On the surface, it feels like a sign of a healthy scene: lots of music, lots of choice. But dig deeper and the question becomes unavoidable: how much live music is too much?
At the heart of any sustainable music career is development. That means more than just playing shows. It’s about building a story, cultivating a fanbase, and creating anticipation for when you step on stage.
If an artist plays too often in the same market, they risk burning out both themselves and their audience. Why buy a ticket if you know you can catch the same act for free at a brewery next weekend? Scarcity builds value; oversupply erodes it.
The bands and artists who have carved out long, sustaining careers didn’t get there by playing to whoever happened to wander into a restaurant or bar with a stage. They built relationships—with fans, with venues, with promoters. They turned every show into a chapter in a bigger story, so audiences felt like they were growing with them, not just catching a set. That’s the difference between an artist people stumble across and an artist people go out of their way to see.
So who is responsible for an artists growth and development?
This is where things get tricky. Artist development isn’t one person’s job, it’s a shared responsibility, but the roles aren’t equal.
Artists need to be intentional about when and where they perform, recognizing that every opportunity is a building block in their career.
Managers (when they’re in the picture) should map out the long-term career arc, not just the next gig.
Venues and promoters are not in the business of artist development, but they do play a key role in shaping the culture of live music. Their job is to cultivate quality, not quantity. A hard truth/lesson for artists to hear.
Artists can’t afford to rely on venues to build their careers. At best, venues provide the stage and the context, but, it’s up to the artist to turn that into a moment that matters so that venues become invested in your career and want you back. Bring paying customers out, sell tickets, talk up the venue and how great it is.
But not every stage is created equal, and not every business that hosts music thinks of itself as a “venue.” Nor should they.
Here’s a crucial distinction that often gets overlooked:
Ticketed venues: theatres, clubs, halls etc/ live or die by ticket sales. Their entire model depends on drawing an audience specifically for the music. That means they’re invested in helping artists grow, because artist success directly impacts their own survival.
Restaurants, breweries, and cafes with a stage : an artist might not be the main attraction. While these spaces offer value: exposure, a place to sharpen live skills, they aren’t structured to nurture careers. Again, nor should they be responsible for nurturing a career. At some point artists need to be responsible for their career.
Both, however, serve a purpose. But if every “venue” in a city is actually just a restaurant with a corner stage, then artists aren’t developing: they’re just playing.
For artists, venues, and cities to grow together in a mutually beneficial way, we need to embrace new iterations of venues, spaces built for music, designed for audiences, and focused on artist growth. The next generation of midsize venues, creative hubs, and listening rooms will do more for local culture than another bar with an open mic.
And here’s a hard truth: venues that failed in the past often failed for a reason. Romanticizing them or trying to revive old models can stall progress. Instead, cities should be bold enough to imagine the next chapter of live music, not recycle the last one.
Too much live music in one place isn’t inherently bad. What matters is alignment. Are artists pacing their shows to build demand? Are venues curating experiences instead of filling nights? Are cities fostering spaces where music can thrive as more than background noise?
A thriving music culture isn’t built on quantity. It’s built on intention, anticipation, and relationships. Because at the end of the day, it’s not about how much music there is, it’s about how much it matters.
