For the first time in the AB's 31 year history: AB had 300,000 concertgoers pass through its doors this year. To that you can also add the more than 30,000 people who attended the (free) outdoor AB activities Boterhammen in het Park, the Feeërieën, De Gulden Ontsporing (the Flemish Feast Day in Brussels) and Broodje Brussel (afternoon concerts in nearby music-café The Music Village).

The AB organised 329 concerts in all, of which 277 took place in the AB. 157 of these concerts (57%) were sold out. The average degree of occupation per concert was 85%. In total, we organised 82 Club concerts and 195 activities in the Main Hall (or a main hall arrangement: AB Box, AB Flex, AB Theatre). 82% of the concerts were AB productions (of which 9% co-productions); 18% of the concerts were organised by a third party.

Approximately 50% of the bands programmed in the AB were Belgian... and they did very well, once again, in 2010: the likes of Arid, Bart Peeters, Jef Neve (with Rios, with GrooveTHing, with José James) Kommil Foo, Ozark Henry and Triggerfinger filled the AB for several days days. Channel Zero broke the record too, with no less than six (!) sold-out ABs in January 2010.

And while we're at it, even more numbers on the AB's virtual visitors:

On average, the AB website welcomed 7,600 unique visitors per day (in 2008 that was 6,200). On 17 February there were 22,000 unique visitors to the website (that was the day Faithless was announced and that The xx could be viewed live via the website). 73% of tickets were sold online this year (64% in 2008).

ABtv films were viewed up to 20,000 times in busy concert months. Of all the concerts that are (or were) in the archives, The Black Box Revelation was the most-viewed in 2010... followed by Jónsi and Faithless. Moby and Rodrigo y Gabriela complete the Top 5, closely followed by Triggerfinger. The livestream-record of 2010 goes to Pendulum. This concert was seen by more than 13,000 unique viewers in five different languages via Netlog.com.

To finish: Six official live @ CD’s/DVD’s were released by record companies this year: those of Jónsi, Channel Zero, Life of Agony, Jef Neve 'GrooveTHing', The Moon Invaders and Franco Saint De Bakker. An overview of the official live @ AB releases is to be found here.

Basically, it was yet another fine musical year.

To you all: a wholehearted thank you and see you again in 2011!