Live music in cities, a mapping method

Dataverse City Musicscapes

What kinds of live music are available to the citizens of the cities of Groningen and Utrecht? This is the main question in two research projects, of which the databases are placed in the DATAVERSE City Musicscapes. The Musicscapes of the cities of Groningen (april 2010) and Utrecht (december 2011, 2013, 2016) consist of extensive collections of data about “organized live musical events.” We restricted our data to live music (as opposed to mass-mediated), performed by live musicians or DJ’s on regular stages (subsidized and private concert and theatre venues, which are specifically designed for music or theatre performances) as well as on non-regular venues (café’s, restaurants, school auditoria, museums, parks, monuments, stores etcetera). To provide for a consistent and repeatable research method, we included only those live events (to be named ‘concerts’ in the following article) that were announced in journals, newspapers, flyers, posters, websites and Facebook pages. This means that street musicians and street organs, but also pop up concerts (flash mobs) and private concerts are not included. Finally music festivals are not included in our datasets because they would cause big fluctuations in our datasets. Evert Bisschop Boele developed the first dataset, to be able to describe the kinds of music available to the inhabitants of Groningen, and to provide a broad description of the daily musical context of the inhabitants of Groningen. Philomeen Lelieveldt used the Groningen format but added new columns to be able to answer more detailled questions about the musical genres programmed on Utrecht venues, and the performers (amateurs, semi pro and professionals). She also added Word files with concert reviews written by the students participating in the project. (2018-8-28)