In the CBOS October survey people were asked whether they followed the eighteenth International Chopin Piano Competition held in Warsaw that month. Every fourth respondent (26%) gave an affirmative reply. Compared to the survey carried out six years ago on the occasion of the competition’s previous edition, this was a decrease of 3 percentage points in audience size. Now as then, more women (30%) followed the competition, as did more people over 65 (41%), big city dwellers (38%), those with higher education (32%) and with per capita incomes of at least 3000 zloty a month (35%).

When questioned about the Chopin Competition, respondents were also asked whether they listened to classical music at all. Interestingly, although the popularity of the competition had dropped slightly, the percentage of people listening to classical music had risen by 5 percentage points on 2015 (from 47% to 52%). Although this is as much as half of all Polish people, actually only 12% listen to this type of music frequently (2% very often, 10% quite often), while 40% do listen to it, but not very often (20% fairly infrequently and a further 20% quite rarely). While the socio-demographic variables are similar here to those observed in relation to the question about following the competition, they are not, however, identical. This time it is not the oldest group who are the most frequent listeners, but those aged 25–34 (17%).