How big is the prog rock community

 

 

So, if other genres can have huge followings because of certain aspects (the way they dress, certain lifestyles, etc.) then maybe Proggers could do the same.........According to the above picture - No real teeth maybe?

 

 

US alone @ 50,000 fans (50-60,000)

North America(including Canada, Mexico and central america) @ 120,000

Europe 150,000

Other parts of the world including non English speakers 200,000 

These are rather conservative estimates but I seriously doubt there are 100,000 or more real prog fans in the US. Dream Theater barely sells that many of their weaker albums and they have hardcore fans who aren't even real prog fans. What I have done in the past is tried to find the sales of a prog album every one has owned and figured it out that way but that's obviously not very reliable. Take an album like close to the edge which reportedly(according to the RIAA) has sold 1 million albums in the US(as of 1998). Let's say 1/10 of those who bought it are real prog fans. That gives us 100,000. However, even that number seems a bit high. So I figure slice that number in half and that would give us the real figure(50,000). Not all prog fans are buying the same album but there must be some album that all or most prog fans own. Then again maybe not. CTTE or SEBTP or ITCOTCK probably come closest though. Unfortunately it's next to impossible to find updated sales figures for these albums since not enough people care. Even if I did though it still would not give us the number of prog fans because many people who own them are not necessarily hardcore prog fans.

So if we are talking the entire planet earth my estimation is about half a million prog fans. I definitely don't think there are one million though so maybe somewhere in between half and one million. I know not everyone on here ives in the US(maybe only 20 percent do)so I figured I would mention that. I could be very accurate or I could be way off but that's what I came up with.

I think it is one of those things ... a silent number of people, just listen to the music and don't find the need to speak out about it.

It might also depend on the area ... PDX is horrible and almost no acts stop here ... but MAGMA sold out 2 shows and the French contingent was having a party! ... conversely RTF played Eugene, and never showed up in PDX ... and it had Chick Corea, Jean-Luc Ponty, Lenny White, Stanley Clarke and Frank Gambale ... and all you can say is ... you gotta be kidding me? And Eugene was sold out and deservedly so!

If you are in Seattle, LA and SF, I think that there is more of it, even if it is not as outspoken as we would like, but I think there is a wide respect all around.

The sad thing for me, is how the EAST can get KC and the WEST can't, which suggests that the audiences here are spread out way too much instead of the huge numbers of people concentrated in the Eastern places, which makes concerts attractive ... but a KC having issues in Seattle? I'm guessing that the facilities is more the problem than anything else ... !!! I can't speak for LA and SF, but seeing Sean Ahearn take a major bath in SF in 1999 is not only scary but also sad ... and on top of it a lot of the audience, then, was very disrespectful of other artists which is something I found ... kinda bad. 

We see some of that here when folks are discussing their favorite Jethro Tull and if it is prog or prog-related or some other kind of prog.

For me, it is stuff like that which hurts what the music is all about ... and how it is seen ... all over ... specially when we need everyone to help make the events work ... instead we kill them!

I think it is a lot larger than estimated here, alone the King Crimson youtube has 145.00 followers, and being a huge KC lover I am not one of those. Yes official has 134.000 followers. Tull 61.100.

Mars Volta 66.600 "the widow" have been shown 6.5 mil. times.

Tool official has has 549.000 followers - Fear In... (the track) has been shown 21.222.325 times.

It is all a matter of that you define as Prog Community.

It you are looking for the once who know the name of the drummer in 5uu's without checking we are talking about a very small number of hardcore fans including friends and family, but if you are talking about people who regularly listen to a band that is considered prog (by PA def.) it must be several million people.