Music Trends in Philadelphia: What happened in 2024 and What Does It Mean
Philadelphia is historic for being a musical hub for upcoming artists, genres, and creative venues. Explore 2024 music trends in Philadelphia and learn what this means for the music environment in the city.
By Jocelyn Hockaday
Philadelphia has long been a creative engine for American music, from jazz and soul to hip-hop and electronic dance music (EDM). In 2024, the city’s music scene continued to thrive—driven by diverse genres, bold venues, and dedicated fans.
Using data gathered from Ticketmaster, a international ticketing platform, and Setlist.fm, a crowd-sourced setlist archive site, concert data was collected and organized through RStudio programming.
Here's what the music scene looked and sounded like and why it is significant to the Philadelphia music ecosystem.
Image 1: An overall map of Philadelphia and it's boarding counties in New Jersey, providing you with the music venues, artist, date of set, and genre which occurred in 2024. Using the search box, you can search for a music event space around Philadelphia, giving you a visual representation of the location of the venue.
Philadelphia is known for it's rich music history, with the city producing the worlds most reputable icons, such as Meek Mill, Jill Scott, Marshmallow, and Boyz II Men. Additionally, the city is the home to venue heirlooms, for example, The Electric Factory (now known as Franklin Music Hall), The Fillmore, and Union Transfer.
The data shows one clear trend: people are attending mid-to-large sized concerts compared to smaller ones. The Wells Fargo Center and The Met Philly are taking the lead as the city's most attended venue, leaving Milkboy Philly last. However, smaller venues such as PhilaMOCA and Warehouse on Watts (W.O.W) are emerging as the underground music scene take over local event spaces.
This distribution suggests that artists and promoters often favor venues with greater capacity and better technical infrastructure, reflecting a strategic preference for more profitable and technically equipped spaces.
The varied data is also a result of the pandemic shutting down access to live music events, drastically shifting the whole music industry. From dancing in fields with others to masked zoom calls- the pandemic created a shift in how fans engage with live music post-pandemic.
Larger festivals such as Coachella saw decreasing tickets sales compared to pre-pandemic times and bands like The Black Keys were forced to cancel their performances. A 2023 survey reported that only about one-third of arts and culture organizations had attendance levels that met or exceeded pre-pandemic numbers, according to the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.
However, A-list artist including Coldplay and Beyonce broke records with tour sales, proving the demand for major artist remains strong. Although Philadelphia is making a comeback post-pandemic, local venues and independent artist recovery in the live music scene remains complex.
Image 2: This pie chart visualizes what percentage of venues were attended for live music events in Philadelphia (2024).
While data from Ticketmaster and Setlist.fm provides a helpful guide to the music, the underground scene is not something broadcasted through major ticketing websites. Often time locals attend events found from word of mouth, social media, and other applications such as Tixr, Radiate, PoshVIP, RAGuide, Live Nation, DICE, ETix, Eventbrite, Reddit, and many more. These applications can assist in defining your search to your music needs and communicate with others online, bringing the community together through music.
For example, in image two, it presents Ardmore Music Hall holding 30% of 2024 concerts while leaving nine venues holding only 5% each of the attended venues based from setlist's performed. This data omits major venues such as The Met Philly, The Mann Center, The Wells Fargo Center, and many others which were observed in image one. It also excludes The Ave, where they specialize in creating an intimate space for the upcoming musicians.
However, the image does provide an overall understanding that the music scene in Philadelphia is becoming larger, compared to the past years based on the type of venues attended.
Image 3: This bar graph provides the percentages of what genre's were listened to at the attended setlist's in Philadelphia (2024).
It's not only about where the music is played- but what music is being played. While live music scales up, the genre's performed provides a clearer picture of what the music scene sounded like in 2024. Philadelphia is historically known for it's diverse genre's in the city, and it has sustained through 2024.
The top genre's based on the data gathered are awesomename, disco, and heartland rock, leaving the other genre's half of the other genre's listened to. However, it is important to note that 50% of the setlist's mentioned do not have a genre assigned to them which can be for various reasons.
Ticketmaster and Setlist.fm rely on metadata either provided from artist, venues, or scraped from other databases. With Ticketmaster, the data suggests they focus on ticket sales and events while Setlist.fm data is not always submitted or verified. The genre's gathered were done so through RStudio and MusicBrainz, which does not require genre tags, but supports them for artist, releases, or recordings.
Additionally, structured genre data is generally new to the music industry, recently emerging in 2019, shifting from informal tagging to more standardized operations. Spotify is one platform that has broadened its genre classification system over the years. In 2016, the platform recognized approximately 1,482 genres. By 2021, this number had grown to over 6,000, reflecting the platform's efforts to capture the nuanced diversity of music. This expansion supports more personalized recommendations and better organization of music content.
As local, independent, and upcoming artist emerge into the scene, some individuals and/or collectives do not have an genre tag, meaning they do not classify under a specific musical category. This can be due to the affluent growth in the music scene or be the artist artistic preference.
As you grow your music knowledge and interest, keep in mind the following factors: genre, where and what you are looking for, what platforms suite your needs, and what venues are accessible to you.
If you are a music lover looking for new music or popular music events, it is important to consider using various sites for accuracy. With reliance on two sites such as Ticketmaster and Setlist.fm, it can limit your live music options in Philadelphia. Remember to consider the type of platform you are using and what you are looking for before deciding where to see your next concert.
As the world continues to adapt post-pandemic living, live music is not just coming back but rather flourishing. From genre to variety, Philadelphia's music scene in 2024 reflect it's historic diversity in both venue and genre.
So, don't forget to talk to one another to find out what's the next music event! Check out your friends Instagram page, or ask your favorite coffee shop what happening. You may never know who your next favorite artist or band will be, or what connection you may create.
