Probably jazz, because women listen to it.

Edited by Pekka - 11 Apr 2011 at 1:04pm

Pekka wrote: ^^Just as much as prog, or less.  That's my experience, but maybe you were joking. Both genres have their universal giants, but nowadays I guess the jazz gig scene is a bit more vibrant underground than prog. But lots of progressive bands are visible in the mainstream rock press, whereas jazz... is there mainstream jazz press?

IMO everything's viceversa, at least as far as I know. Jazz is a huge phenomenon, gathering millions of people every year all around Europe especially via festivals (here's an amazing, complete list of festivals in Europe; there are going to be 25 festivals in the next three weeks!). There is jazz everywhere in the media, even dedicated media institutions such as Mezzo () and many radio stations (one of my favourites is TSF from France); compared to this, all the prog stations that I know are online "radios", not real stations, and prog basically doesn't exist in visual media. If you compare THE ultimate prog site, PA, which has that amazing database, to a fairly good and representative site like AllAboutJazz, which is mostly news, interviews and editors' reviews, PA has a ranking of only 32,776 and gets only 1200 links, while AAJ has the ranking of 23,404 and almost 3300 incoming links.

And at all jazz concerts I've been, the number of women was much larger than at the prog concerts.

Even harmonium.ro consists almost only of jazz articles.


Edited by harmonium.ro - 11 Apr 2011 at 1:34pm

Jazz festivals are a curious phenomenon. One of Finland's biggest festival is Pori Jazz, but when you look at the headliners every year, they've got hip hop, soul, dub... and some jazz in the small tents around the area. And Montreux jazz festival? Is it actually a jazz happening?  

idlero wrote: How many women come for the music and how many come with their boyfriends/husbands?

Edited by Pekka - 11 Apr 2011 at 1:55pm

Im at school so I dont have time to say everything I'd like to

but if we're talking sales alone, jazz has prog beat. Sure there are some individual prog bands that climb the charts, but as a whole, not really. Some jazz albums have sold in the millions, I'm not sure if any individual prog albums have sold that much (I'm sure they have. And I'm not talking about Pink Floyd, as they are not strictly prog IMO, and are the exception to the "rule")

I would also say jazz has many household names, whereas I would argue prog doesnt. If you entered a crowded room and yelled "Miles Davis!", "Herbie Hancock!", "Louis Armstrong!", etc I'm sure a few people would turn their heads.

Aside from yelling "YES!" which wouldn't work well in this situation, yelling any other band name besides Pink Floyd would not gather much attention. (Maybe Rush?)

There are also a few jazz radio stations in my area, whereas even classic rock radio rarely plays prog (again, besides Pink Floyd, they are beyond "prog" in terms of popularity; most people do not associate them with prog)

Maybe it's different in Europe, but I live in the NYC tri state area, so I base my observations on the general public of this area.

So I say jazz is more popular.

Jazz but prog does come close only because it has so much jazz in it

Jazz by a whisker but i prefer Prog

I don't know what it is about jazz, but it seems to have a problem where it is much harder to find out and hear exerts from new (and even old!) releases. It's especially weird when I see albums that have a lot of praise as masterpieces and visionary but only have one or two clips on youtube. 

The OP was;

What music is more popular-jazz or prog?

In my house they get equal billing