The Australian States International Artists Keep Skipping

Live music is one of those things that brings people together like nothing else. That feeling of being in a crowd, hearing your favourite track played loud, surrounded by people who just get it. It’s electric. And honestly? Every single person in this country deserves access to that feeling, no matter which state or territory they call home.

That’s why Culture Kings decided to look at the data. We dug into more than 70 years of Australian touring history from the Australian Concert Tour Database (austourdbase.com), covering 29,665 shows across 1,121 artists, 264 cities and towns, and 356 named festivals from 1954 to 2025 (Australian-origin artists excluded). The goal was simple: to understand where international artists are actually going when they tour Australia, and where there’s an opportunity for fans to get more.

And what the numbers show is that there’s a real gap between the access fans in major cities have compared to those in regional areas and smaller states. Nowhere is that clearer than in the Northern Territory.

The Numbers Don't Lie: Australia's Live Music Divide

When you measure international touring activity per capita, the NT sits last with just 252 shows per million residents across the entire 70-year record. New South Wales, by comparison, clocks in at 1,195 per million. 

Source: austourdbase.com / ABS 2024 population estimates.

The Territory That Tours Forgot

The NT's position at the bottom of every metric here isn't a statistical quirk. Across the full 70-year dataset, the Territory recorded just 64 international-artist shows in total. That's fewer than many individual Sydney or Melbourne venues chalk up in a single year. Of those, 58 were in Darwin. 

The recent decade makes it even more stark. Since 2015, the NT has hosted just 19 international shows, which translates to 75 shows per million residents over the past ten years. For context, that puts it last nationally by a considerable margin, well below Queensland (210 per million) and Tasmania (217 per million).

The recent picture: shows per million residents (2015 to 2025)

Source: austourdbase.com / ABS 2024 population estimates.

Population Without Representation

The situation gets more frustrating when you look at big-population states that still fall well short of their fair share. Queensland, home to more than 5.5 million people and two solid cities in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, ranks sixth nationally for shows per capita at just 837 per million.

Western Australia, with nearly three million residents and a geography that genuinely limits alternatives, sits fifth at 1,084 per million. Both states get international tours, sure, but significantly fewer relative to their populations than the eastern capitals. And once you move beyond Brisbane or Perth, the numbers fall away sharply.

When the Festival Ends, So Does the Music

Here's one of the more eye-opening findings from the data: a whole list of Australian towns only appear on the international touring map because of festivals. Take away the festival circuit, and their entire recorded international music history goes with it.

These are towns where every single international show in the database is tagged as a festival appearance. No standalone tours. No headline acts rolling through on their own run.

Towns where international music only exists at festivals

Source: austourdbase.com. Festival appearances identified via database tagging.

Woodford, QLD is a prime example. All 41 of its recorded international-artist appearances are tied to the Woodford Folk Festival. Busselton, WA owes its entire international touring record (49 shows) to the Southbound Festival. 

Tasmania tells a similar story at a state level. It derives 26 per cent of its total historical shows from festivals, and with Falls Festival on hiatus in recent years, an already thin pipeline has got even thinner.

Where Sydney and Melbourne Leave Everyone Behind

The city-level data makes the concentration impossible to ignore. Sydney has racked up 7,783 international-artist shows since 1954. Melbourne has 6,836. Brisbane, sitting third on the list, has 3,676 shows, which sounds significant until you realise that's less than half of Sydney's total.

Beyond the top five cities, the drop-off is sharp. Newcastle ranks seventh nationally with 601 shows. Wollongong has 286. Hobart, the capital of an entire state, sits on 270 international shows. Launceston, Tasmania's second city, has just 79.

What This Means for Music Fans Across the Country

We put the data to our CEO Justin Hillberg, and his take gets to the heart of what this is really about:

"The things that stand out to us aren't just the gaps; it's how passionate fans are everywhere in this country, including the places tour buses skip.

"Culture Kings exists at the meeting point of music and fashion, and being able to put the gear of the world's biggest artists in the hands of fans from every state is something we're genuinely proud of. The love for music is national, even when the touring isn't."

Justin Hillberg, CEO, Culture Kings

The Bigger Picture

The data doesn't point the finger at any one entity. The economics of routing international acts through Australia's vast geography create genuine barriers for promoters looking to take shows beyond the established capitals. Flights, freight, venue capacity, audience size. It all adds up.

But the cumulative effect, across 70 years, is a touring map that looks strikingly similar decade after decade. Sydney and Melbourne at the centre, diminishing returns the further you get from either city, and a growing gap between the fans who get to see their favourite artists live and those who don't.

Methodology

Show data was sourced from Austourdbase, a community-maintained database of international artists touring Australia. The dataset covers 29,665 shows across 1,121 artists, 264 cities and towns, and 356 named festivals from 1954 to 2025. Australian-origin artists were excluded from the analysis. States were ranked by total international-artist shows and a per-capita rate (shows per million residents), with a secondary lens on 2015 to 2025 activity for current relevance. Population data was drawn from the Australian Bureau of Statistics' 2024 mid-year state and territory estimates. City-level findings are limited to locations already recorded in the source; cities with no recorded international-artist activity cannot be identified from this dataset alone.

Can't Make It to the Show? We've Got You Covered.

Look, we can't fix the touring schedules. But we can make sure that no matter where you are in Australia, you can still connect with the culture. Whether it's the merch drop from your favourite artist's world tour or the freshest streetwear from the brands that soundtrack every major festival, Culture Kings brings it all to you.

Rep the artists. Live the culture. Shop the latest streetwear drops at Culture Kings.