Please note that this press release was corrected 14 October 2020 at 15:50. Figures on attendance to concerts by the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra in the previous release were based on incorrect information. On 19 October figures regarding concert guests in Harpa from before 2019 were corrected.
Just over 205 thousand guests attended concerts in Iceland’s three main music halls in 2019. Those are Harpa and Salurinn in the capital region and Hof in the North East region.
The number of concert guests multiplied as the number of music halls increased from one to three between 2009 and 2011. Of those, Harpa’s concert guests made the most difference. However, attendance has decreased again since 2016, with Harpa’s number of concert guests going from 215,810 guests in 2016 to 174,535 in 2019. The number of guests in the other two music halls also decreased between 2018 and 2019.
Attendance to symphonic concerts also decreased in 2019
About 80 thousand guests attended 96 domestic concerts held by the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra and SinfoniaNord in 2019. That is equivalent to around 22,5% of the country’s population.1 Of those, 77,549 guests attended 89 concerts by the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra and 2,699 guests attended seven concerts by SinfoniaNord.
Attendance to the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra’s domestic concerts has decreased since 2017, when it reached its height of 85 thousand guests. The number of domestic concerts was the same in those two years, or 89. The number has stayed more or less stable for SinfoniaNord with notable exceptions in 2017 and 2018 when the number of guests reached 15 and 12 thousand.
About the data
Statistics Iceland annually collects information about concerts from the Icelandic Symphonic Orchestra, SinfoniaNord, Hof, Harpa and Salurinn. Concerts held by the symphonic orchestras in any of the three concert halls are included in both data sets (that is from the orchestras and the concert halls).
1 Proportion of the population on January 1st, 2019 (Population – key figures 1703-2020). It is important to note that attendance numbers are not counts of individual guests, as the same person can attend more than one concert. This means that those people who attend more than one concert are also counted more than once in our data.