Opera Australia may have been the biggest winner at the 2014 Helpmann awards but pop music is up and opera is down according to the latest figures from the Australian live performance industry association.

Live Performance Australia has released attendance and revenue figures for 2013. It’s worthwhile pointing out that the ticketing data is reported from selected organisations, and so certain categories such as small festivals and small theatres are under-represented.

That said, it’s an interesting read. Revenue for live performances overall was up in 2013, with total ticket sales accounting for $1.48bn, a 22.7% increase year-on-year. At least some of this increase is due to increases in the average ticket price, which are at an all-time high.

Here’s a time series of ticketing and revenue – note that a change in methodology between 2007 and 2008 means you should compare 2004-07 and 2008-13 separately. Also please ignore the weird scale on tickets per person, it should be from 0 to 1 but it’s bugged:

The number of tickets per person is up year-on-year, but is pretty flat over time.

Within the report is an interesting comparison of different categories of live performance:

Since 2008, musical theatre has declined in the percentage share of attendance. Opera and comedy are both down year-on-year, and contemporary music has increased by 7.6 percentage points since 2008, maintaining its position as the largest overall category. The increase in the festivals categories is due to the inclusion of the Adelaide and Perth fringe festivals in the survey for the first time, according to the report.

The large year-on-year increase in circus and physical theatre is attributed to multiple Cirque du Soleil productions in 2013 along with other tours.

For comparison, here are the figures the Australian Bureau of Statistics have for arts and culture attendance:

The bureau’s figures show the national attendance rates for each year, and support the increasing popularity of popular/contemporary music. Classical music is the least popular using the bureau’s categories. Unfortunately, the ABS doesn’t break their stats down into as many categories, so we can’t see if any of the other trends are supported here.