How many 1000-4000 capacity venues does a town need?

Austin is adding more midsized venues and this article suggests that it will be bad for the local music scene there because there aren't enough local fans to patronize them all.

What it will mean is that on any given night there will be more places for touring bands to play. That means you can have more big acts hit town simultaneously, and they can all land weekend slots, thus giving them less incentive to schedule midweek shows. But this also means it will be harder to fill up those clubs every night of the week.

Multipurpose venues can stay fully booked by combining sports, convention, and entertainment dates. But venues that only depend on live music don't have those options.

The article also says that local acts don't draw well enough to play these venues, so if the midsized rooms take all the available entertainment money from a town, the small clubs will close and local bands will be out-of-luck.

The battle of the bandstands: "In a few years, local music fans will enjoy many more concert options than ever before. But let's say they have only about $35 a week to spend on live music: Will they spend it seeing Brit songstress Corrine Bailey Rae at the Austin City Limits Studio Theater on a Tuesday night, or will they catch the Mother Truckers at the Continental Club on Thursday, check out the new garage bands at Beerland on a Friday, then traipse over to Emo's to see a group they read about in Whoopsy? ...

"That's the worry of Danny Crooks, the former Steamboat owner, whose son Sean is a bassist and vocalist bubbling under the pop band the Alice Rose.

"'All these new developments are going to be great for road shows, but how are the small clubs, who put Austin music on the map, going to be able to compete?' Danny Crooks said."

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