Drew McManus on the Orchestra business | est. 2003

Ticket Prices

Placebo Pricing And The Ticket Price Quandary

Mon, Jan 1, 2012
Regardless of your view on whether or not the average ticket price at professional US orchestras is an accurate representation of the overall experience’s value or is artificially inflated to help pad earned income shortfalls (or a little of Column A and a little of Column B), Joe Patti presented a fascinating point of view

Increase Your Subscriber base by 50% In One Day

Fri, Sep 9, 2010
That’s precisely what the Joffrey Ballet accomplished through a Groupon “deal of the day” offer in the Chicago area. Details are available in the 9/3/2010 edition of the Chicago Tribune in a blog post by Chris Jones but in a nutshell, Joffrey leveraged Groupon’s popularity (as a Chicagoland resident, I can say it’s great) but

Good News On Ticket Subsidies

Wed, Sep 9, 2010
Thanks to reader Jon Hardie for pointing out an article by David Abel in the 8/28/2010 edition of the Boston Globe I would have otherwise missed which reports on the Highland Street Foundation’s work at subsidizing ticket prices at several Boston area cultural institutions. Regular readers know how strongly I feel about the connection between

Michael Kaiser Couldn’t Be More Right

Thu, May 5, 2010
I have to fess up and admit that I haven’t been keeping up with Michael Kaiser’s blog at Huffington Post even though I know it would be for the best. But that’s been turning around as I’ve been wading through Michael’s archives and one item that caught my attention was a post from 1/4/2010 titled

A Useful Look At Access and Affordability

Wed, Jan 1, 2009
The 2/2/2009 edition of the New Yorker published an intriguing article by Alex Ross who took it upon himself to find out how much live classical music he could consume in New York City on a budget of $100. As it turns out, it was quite a bit thanks in part to some fantastic free
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