Charlotte Sometimes

No, not that one by The Cure but I’m off to Charlotte, NC today for business and while in town I’ll be attending tonight’s performance of the Charlotte Symphony featuring Inside The Arts’ own Lynn Harrell as he performs Beethoven’s Triple Concerto along with Helen Nightengale, violin and Joanne Pearce Martin, piano. This will be my first trip to the Charlotte area as well as the first time the orchestra live so if you plan on being at the concert and see me there, come up and say hello!

Read more

Damn You Alex Ross!

For years now, I’ve been enjoying the benefits of seatguru.com, which until it was picked up by TripAdvisor.com in 2007, was a fairly well kept secret. After that, the associated spike in traffic meant more travelers with inside info but for whatever reason, the handful of business colleagues I tipped off to seatguru had never heard of it before. Well, that’s all gone now since cultural uber-blogger Alex Ross posted a little something in praise of the service a few days ago at The Rest Is Noise

Read more

The Updated Naughty And Nice List For New Media PR

The always sharp Lisa Hirsch, author of the popular and long lived culture blog Iron Tongue of Midnight, recently updated her list of new media PR do’s and don’ts. In the new diminutive augmented form, Lisa dishes out sound advice for PR professionals looking to make a meaningful connection with the proprietors of new media outlets. As before, one of my favorite pearls of wisdom is “DO make sure the press release is relevant to the people you’re emailing. I am happy to read press releases for events all over the world, but not everyone is. On the other hand, I rarely read pop music press releases. That is, know your audience.”…

Read more

Brouhaha Over Business Models

The 11/9/2009 edition of the Huffington Post published an article by Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser that starts off with the question “Does the Symphonic Orchestra Model Work?” The piece has caused quite a stir within the orchestra business; dander is up, hackles raised, and righteous indignation abounds. Yet, regardless how many times I read the post, I don’t see what everyone is so upset about…

Read more

The Untapped Revenue Beyond Required Registration

Since the onset of the Orchestra Website Reviews, the issue of requiring users to register in order to explore ticket information and/or make a purchase has generated a great deal of heated debate. Unfortunately, most positions boiled down to hunch rather than anything supported by quantifiable data but an article by Jared M. Spool published on 1/14/2009 titled The $300 Million Button that was originally published as part of Luke Wroblewski’s …

Read more