Shake to the Beat: Exploring the Seismic Signals and Stadium Response of Concerts and Music Fans

Abstract

Large music festivals and stadium concerts are known to produce unique vibration signals that resemble harmonic tremor, particularly at frequencies around 1–10 Hz. This study investigates the seismic signals of a Taylor Swift concert performed on 5 August 2023 (UTC) as part of a series at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, with an audience of ∼70,000. Signals were recorded on regional seismic network stations located within ∼9 km of the stadium, as well as on strong-motion sensors placed near and inside the stadium prior to the concert series. We automatically identified the seismic signals from spectrograms using a Hough transform approach and characterized their start times, durations, frequency content, particle motions, radiated energy, and equivalent magnitudes. These characteristics allowed us to associate the signals with individual songs and explore the nature of the seismic source. The signal frequencies matched the song beat rates well, whereas the signal and song durations were less similar. Radiated energy was determined to be a more physically relevant measure of strength than magnitude, given the tremor-like nature of the signals. The structural response of the stadium showed nearly equal shaking intensities in the vertical and horizontal directions at frequencies that match the seismic signals recorded outside the stadium. In addition, we conducted a brief experiment to further evaluate whether the harmonic tremor signals could be generated by the speaker system and instruments, audience motions, or something else. All evidence considered, we interpret the signal source as primarily crowd motion in response to the music. The particle motions of the strongest harmonics are consistent with Rayleigh waves influenced by scattered body waves and likely reflect how the crowd is moving. Results from three other musical performances at SoFi in summer 2023 were similar, although differences in the signals may relate to the musical genre and variations in audience motions.