How 2024 was a bright spot in India’s concert music scene

For India’s music lovers, the year 2024 has been a treat.

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From international music acts such as Jonas Brothers, Sting, Ed Sheeran, Maroon 5, Bryan Adams and Dua Lipa to its own Punjabi star Diljit Dosanjh, the year has been a series of concerts. With Coldplay's Music of the Spheres World Tour, Ed Sheeran’s a seven-city tour that includes Shillong, and Mr. Big’s return to India after 15 years and even talks of a possible Eminem tour of India, 2025 also looks to be promising.

Data too appears to back this spurt in concerts. According to a year-end report by the online ticketing platform BookMyShow, 2024 saw “30,687 live events across 319 cities” — an 18 percent growth in India’s live entertainment consumption compared to the previous year. Significantly, the most dramatic growth — an astounding 682 percent — came from Tier-2 cities, with Kanpur, Shillong, and Gandhinagar emerging as strong markets for live events.

“The footfall at big-ticket concerts in India, such as those featuring artistes like Dua Lipa, Bryan Adams, and Diljit Dosanjh, has been substantial, and drawing over 30,000 concertgoers, filling stadiums and arenas to capacity,” a spokesperson from Zomato Live, a live entertainment platform, told While cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore have been at the forefront of India’s burgeoning live music scene, the demand is also extending to Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Jaipur, Indore, and Goa.

"This growing demand is evident in the fact that over 50 percent of the ticket buyers for the Zomato Feeding India concert with Dua Lipa (in November) hailed from cities outside of Mumbai,” the spokesperson added. Analysts believe that India’s billion-plus population, diverse musical tastes, growing appetite for live entertainment, and increasing disposable income is making it a hotspot for global artistes. According to Schubert Fernandes, a Mumbai-based publicist and indie artiste advisor, this concert boom was inevitable and would have happened earlier if not for the pandemic.