Demographics of Carnatic Music

[GaryInThailand]

Attending the festival season in Chennai for the first time this year, I found myself wondering just how many people in the world actually listen to and enjoy pure classical Carnatic music.

I heard from some that about 20,000 individuals attend at least some concert during the festival season, and the Cleveland aradhana claims 8,000 attendees.

I have to think that the attendance, which must overlap to some extent, represents some significant fraction of the total Carnatic classical listening audience. What do you think. Is it 20%? 10%?

Difficult to measure, but if you assume the attendance at these events is some significant fraction of the listening audience, then our entire community is that of a small city, not larger. It's a wonder the art can prosper in such circumstance, especially as it's getting increasingly scattered geographically.

I'm interested in any perspectives and information others may have.

[Nick H]

You would have to take into account the very many outposts of Carnatic music in America (the whole continent) and Europe, as well as those in India who are not in Chennai.

Whilst there is never going to be a centre of rasikas, musicians and events anything like as big as Chennai, still, there is quite a bit of carnatic music elsewhere in the world

[VK RAMAN]

Many of the rasikas do not actually go to concerts but watch TV and listen to them. Just like a soccer, it is not the only audience in the stadium that is watching but the entire population watching TV interested in soccer try to watch through TV. It is therefore very difficult to measure the depth of population interested in CM. I know for sure some of the TV broadcasts are directed towards the audience who otherwise do not attend the concerts personally and at the same time get Ads to finance these broadcasts.

[GaryInThailand]

I don't argue that most of the rasikas are at these events. But it seems it must be some significant percentage, whether that's 1, 5, 10 or whatever. Does anyone have any other statistics to measure the fanbase? Record sales, or broadcast viewerships, for example? I would imagine someone somewhere collects numbers. I'm not trying to make an argument. I'm just curious.

This forum reports 6260 members. Are we the tip of an iceberg, or are we much of the 'berg itself? I don't know.

[ardhanariswar]

You might be able to get an idea from seeing how many Carnatic music videos there are on YouTube. Specifically you can look at the statistics of any video, and get an idea of the demographics and which countries view the video the most.

[Nick H]

My guess would be that, from the countries where there is an audience for carnatic music, only a very small percentage of audience travels to Chennai during December, and not many more during the whole year. Some more may want to come, but may be unable due to the very high cost of bringing a family to India, or may have have other priorities for limited holiday time.

[vasanthakokilam]

I wrote this up in a different thread http://www.rasikas.org/forums/viewtopic. ... 87#p213187
but it is somewhat applicable to this discussion. So I am pasting it here.
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Let us take a quick look at the CM target audience. This is more a baseline. Meaning, this is for a normal day, not a festival or any other special day. This is just my model, please feel free to construct your own and test it. As with any such population model, it is approximate, borrowed heavily from various sources, including classical music patterns in other parts of the world.

The thumb rule: 3-25-3. 3% of the population is the CM live concert going target audience. Out of that 25% hear about concerts on a given day and out of that 3% show up. That audience is then shared by the concerts of that day, the popular ones getting more of the average share and less popular ones getting less.

That is an executive summary. The promoters have some control over the middle number but the first and third numbers are hard to change easily and it is more of a long term effort, if at all. But it is definitely worthwhile to work hard to change the first and third numbers.

Now to some details.

There are four types of CM audiences: Attending Live concerts, listening to recordings, listening to Radio and watching TV.
There are big differences in the seriousness of the participation by these types of audiences. Live concert is the most demanding of effort and attention. Also, for elderly people, traveling to concert halls is not that easy. So of the four, % attending live concerts tends to be the lowest percentage and watching it on TV will be the highest percentage.

If you combine all the four types of audiences, we can estimate the audience to be around 25%-30% of the population. But if you consider only the live CM concert percentage, it is around 3%.

That is still a fairly big number for a city like Chennai. That is around 150,000 people. The season may skew that a bit given the influx of visitors. With advertisements in local newspapers, you will make 15% aware of the concert and another 10% through other means. That is the 25% awareness number. That is 37500 people. The attending audience is 3% of that which is 1125. Here is the sobering thought. On a given day, the total number of people attending a CM concert is around 1125. That is shared by all the concerts, a private concert in Chromepet attracting 40 people to a Mylapore Sabha attracting 100 people. ( Top tier ones may get more, the lower tier ones will get less. )

Some festival days may skew this number up, an exciting cricket match may skew this number down. Definitely, December will skew this up tremendously because of the network effect. It is the same effect as buyers at a shop in a typical day vs buyers and sellers on the sandai ( market ) day where the network effect kicks in: Buyers show up because sellers are there, and sellers show up because buyers are there.

[cmlover]

My guesstimate of the global CM community is about 250,000.
Perhaps I can defend iit using some complex mathematical calculations
But sadly I feel the numbers are declining (as in TN) as the old order changeth giving place to new...