More Data (And Good News) On Streaming Concert Activity

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The 10/26/2020 edition of the Seattle Times published an article by Melinda Bargreen that reports the Seattle Chamber Music Society (SCMS) is discovering their 2020 Virtual Summer Festival produced positive results.

While SCMS doesn’t appear to have released any financial data, you can still see the results are encouraging:

  • 389 new ticket purchasers which comprised 32 percent of all ticket sales.
  • 92 first-time donors.
  • Thanks to being free of max seat count restrictions, SCMS had 300 more subscribers than usual.

The more groups release this sort of information, the better.

SCMS deserves kudos for sharing their discoveries and hopefully, it is the first step toward publishing more financial results. While no one expects revenue to match what would have come in from traditional in-person ticketing, the more the field can quantify the value of diversifying earned income revenue streams the better.

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

View all posts by Drew McManus | Website

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