Touring circuits and the geography of rock music performance

There are significant cultural differences among music audiences in different locations. Such geographic differences in the propensity to consume new popular music will have an impact on the choices artists and their managers make about where to perform live concerts. We suggest that the popularity of particular places on touring circuits operates as a proxy for the cultural sophistication of the place. Moreover, various locational factors also play a role in where performances take place. In this article, we explore how tour itineraries in the United States and Canada create urban cultural and spatial hierarchies and vice versa. The data source to establish these hierarchies is Celebrity Access, an online industry source in which large amounts of touring information are available. We include more than 12,000 concerts played during a two-year period (2006-08), mainly by alternative rock artists, in the analysis.