Your streaming dashboards already tell you where people listen to you. Used carefully, that is a good starting list of cities for shows. Used carelessly, it sends you to a city with a few hundred listeners and an empty room. The difference is how you read the numbers and what you check before you book anything.
Where to find city-level data
Most of what you need is already in tools you have:
- Spotify for Artists shows the cities where your listeners are, and you can change the time range.
- Apple Music for Artists gives a similar view of where people listen.
- YouTube Studio has a geography report. It is mostly by country, with more detail in some views.
- Instagram Insights lists the top cities of your followers.
- TikTok analytics is mostly country level, so it helps less for picking a venue.
In the CULT dashboard you see streams by platform and country for each reporting period, with the source and period shown on every report. For cities, go to the artist tools of the platforms themselves.
What city data can and cannot tell you
A listener is not a ticket buyer. Streaming is passive: someone pressed play on a playlist while cooking. Going to a show costs money, time and a babysitter. Only a small part of your listeners in any city will ever come out, so treat the data as a hint, not a promise.
A few things to check before you trust a number:
- Is it steady or a spike? A city that shows up in your top five month after month is a real signal. A city that jumped for one week after a playlist add may disappear next month.
- Size of the city. 900 listeners in a small city can mean far more than 900 in a huge one. Compare your listeners to the size of the city, not only to other cities on your list.
- Where do the listeners come from? If most of them arrived through one playlist, they may like the playlist, not you. Followers, saves and repeat listening say more than a single stream count.
Combine streaming data with social and personal data
Put the sources side by side. Write down your top five cities from the streaming apps, your top five from Instagram, and the places people mention in comments and messages: "come to Ganja", "when are you playing in Istanbul". Add the cities where you already have friends, family or past shows.
A city that appears in two or three of these lists is a strong candidate. A city that appears only in one dashboard is a maybe. A city nobody has ever mentioned is a gamble, however nice the venue looks.
Test demand before you book
You can check interest cheaply, before you pay a deposit:
- Post a story or short poll with three cities and ask where you should play next.
- Open a simple sign-up list, by email or a messaging group, with one promise: "I will tell you first when I play in your city."
- Message a local promoter or venue manager, say how many listeners and followers you have there, and ask what a realistic crowd looks like for an artist at your stage.
- Look for a shared bill or a support slot with a local act. It borrows their audience and lowers your risk.
- Start with a smaller format: a café set, a house concert, an open mic, a radio session. A packed small room is better for your career than a half-empty big one.
After a week or two, count what came back. If a few dozen people in a city left their contact details, you have something real. Expect only part of any list to turn up, and choose a room for fewer people than your list.
Do the cost math
Cities near each other make better routes. Two or three nearby cities in one weekend share travel and accommodation costs, and give you a few posts of content. Before you commit, write down travel, lodging, sound and backline, venue fees, and what you realistically expect to earn. If a city looks great in the data but costs twice as much to reach as the next one, it can wait.
After the show, feed the data back
Compare the actual attendance with what you expected. Ask people at the show to join your list, and note where they came from. Then check your dashboards over the next few weeks: cities where you played often show a small rise in listeners and followers. Over a year, those notes tell you which numbers on your dashboard you can trust and which you should ignore.
Quick checklist
- Top five cities from streaming and top five from social, side by side.
- At least one city that appears in both.
- A poll or sign-up list answered by real people.
- A promoter or venue asked about realistic numbers.
- Costs written down before any deposit.