July 2009 Archives

I know I let a large number of comments build up, unanswered. That's because of the press of other work, and also -- no small thing -- because of my quest to live a more balanced life, one in which I'm not at the computer every minute, typing, typing, typing.

But now I've gone back over the comments from the past couple of weeks, and responded to a number of them, especially to the very gracious response from the man who conducted the Chorus America study. I can't say I agree with many of the points he made, but I'm grateful for his attention to what I'd said.

Now I'm going on vacation, and posts may be few for the next week, and then stop for all of August. There's so much I want to say here, though, and I promise that most of it will show up on the blog, if not now, then in September.

This post makes me just a little sad to write. Chorus America, a while ago, published the results of a study, which they say shows that people who sing in choruses are exceptionally good citizens. They then say that choruses should bring this information to the media, "to help establish an awareness of the personal and communal benefits of choral singing." Here's their press release about the study, and here's the study itself. (The quote comes from the end of the study.)

So why am I sad to talk about this? Because the study suffers from an elementary misuse of statistics. But it's so eager, so hopeful, and so well-intentioned that it's almost painful to tell the poor choral people that their work is flawed. I feel like I'm telling a lovely child that I can't take her to the zoo today.

The claims the study makes are very strong. Here are excerpts from the press release:

If you enjoy singing with your neighbors, congregation, or classmates, you're taking an increasingly popular path to a successful life....Seventy-eight percent of choral singers indicated they "at least sometimes" volunteer their time in their community, while only 50% of the general public say the same....Choral singers donate 2.5 times more money to philanthropic organizations than the general public....Ninety-six percent of choral singers surveyed who are eligible voters said they vote regularly in national and local elections; only 70% of the general public cites the same level of participation.

Choral singers, in other words, are better citizens.

What's wrong with this? Well, first, if you find that choral singers participate more in civic activities, you've loaded the dice, because simply by singing in a chorus, they're participating in something. Your sample, in other words, is -- by its very nature -- a sample of people who already participate in at least one civic activity. It might not be remarkable to find that they participate in other things as well. (If I told you that that people who buy season tickets to the NFL like sports more than their neighbors do, would you be surprised?)

But that's only the start of the trouble. The biggest problem is the control group (so to speak) for the study, the people whom choral singers are compared to. It's the general public! Or in other words, the entire population. Choral singers vote more often than the general public does? They give more to charity? They volunteer more? Well, so what? Suppose I told you that choral singers commit fewer murders than a random sample from the population at large. You wouldn't be surprised. You might say, "But of course that's true, because we're pretty sure that, by and large, the kind of people who commit murder don't sing in choruses."

So maybe the truth about voting, volunteering, and charitable giving is similar. Maybe the facts cited in the study aren't really facts about choral singers, but instead facts about the demographic that choral singers come from.

Maybe these aren't facts about choral singers, but instead facts about the demographic that choral singers come from. Maybe the kind of people who sing in choruses -- measured by standard demographic traits, like income, education, or occupation -- are already the kind of people who vote, volunteer, and give to charity. Or maybe, to look at this a different way, people who participate in any community activity are more likely to vote and give to charity. Which would mean choral singers weren't exceptional, because they were behaving exactly the way any people who get out of the house to do anything in their community would behave.

What the study should have done is so elementary that -- to sing this song again -- it makes me wince to set it forth. The study should first have found out what kind of people sing in choruses, what their other demographic traits might be, and how, as a group, people from that demographic fare in all the measures that we might want to apply to choral groups.

Then theh study should have looked at people who participate in other community activities, and find out their characteristics. Only then should it have looked at choral singers, and found out if they -- as a distinct group within their demographic, and as compared to others from that demographic who take part in community activities -- have any special traits.

As I said, all this is elementary. The conclusions of the Chorus America study might in fact be true. Maybe choral singers really are exceptional citizens. But Chorus America hasn't even come close to proving that.

(I ascribe this lack of skills and judgment, by the way, to the same eagerness about the arts that makes arts advocates sometimes think uncritically in other ways. See, for instance, my post about the arts bailout, my Wall Street Journal essay on the same subject, and my post about the none too grounded proposals that came out of last summer's mammoth arts conference in Denver.)

I've talked before here on the lack of solid information -- statistical data -- on the current state of classical music. This hits in two ways. First, about some things (ticket sales to orchestra and chamber music concerts) there either isn't any data at all, or else the data hasn't been made public. And second, the data that does exist (for instance the NEA's periodic surveys of the classical music audience, or my own work on the age of the audience in the past) doesn't seem to circulate enough.

As an example, look at an eager essay by Karin Brookes in the July-August 2005 issue of Symphony magazine (the publication of the League of American Orchestras), titled "Rally The Troops: Music Education Advocates Mobilize To Ensure That No Arts Are Left Behind." This is a better than average version of the standard argument for music education, or rather for the need of classical music organizations to support music education: Without it, we won't have a future audience.

Many people firmly believe this. But as she makes her case, Brookes flies off into what I'll call magical thinking, the wholesale invention -- though done honestly, with good intentions -- of reality. Here's the place where she does this:

Audience motivation research conducted by the American Symphony Orchestra League [the former name, of course, of the League of American Orchestras] in 2001 found that the average concertgoer had significant experience with music before age fourteen, and that 75 percent of the current audience had an opportunity to study an instrument -- even if it was just a few months on the trombone in sixth grade. Unlike reading, playing soccer, or eating fine food, an interest in classical music seems to go into a long period of latency in early adulthood, before emerging once again after years of breadwinning and child-rearing. But this generally happens only if the spark was kindled during the school-age years.

And the payoffs aren't immediate, either; the National Endowment for the Arts 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts found that the average age of classical concertgoers has held steady in the mid-50s for many years. The logical hypothesis that more music teachers in the schools will produce more people in the concert hall, unfortunately, would require decades of research to prove. Without decades to wait, orchestras have little choice but to advocate. orchestras have little choice but to advocate.

In passing, let's note that this is fascinating logic. We can't prove that music teachers in the school will generate our audience, but let's use our precious resources of time, energy, and very likely money in a fight to get those teachers teaching. Suppose we're wrong?

But let that go. What's more fascinating -- and really rather sad -- is that, first, Brookes misstates the NEA's data. I can't imagine how she came to do this. Clearly she'd never seen the NEA document she mentions. Because what it says is very different, that the classical music audience (or, more strictly, people who reported in the 2000 census that they'd been to at least one classical performance) had a median age of 49, which was up from 45 in 1992 (and, as other NEA reports show, up from 40 in 1982).

(The 2002 NEA data is in a research note about findings in the 2002 Survey of Public Participation, and not in the main survey report.)

So this is like a game of telephone (or, in Britain, chinese whispers). The NEA puts out not just one report, but a whole series, and what they say apparently gets distorted in transmission. People -- and there are many of them -- who believe that the classical music audience was always the same age it is now also, apparently, might believe that the NEA has data that supports their belief.

But what fascinates me most of all, in Brookes's piece, is this:

Unlike reading, playing soccer, or eating fine food, an interest in classical music seems to go into a long period of latency in early adulthood, before emerging once again after years of breadwinning and child-rearing.

As far as I know, that's 100% mythical. There's no evidence for it. Yes, people might go to classical concerts more often as they get older, when they have more money and (because their kids are out of the house) more leisure. But the "latency period" never existed. Instead, as I've established here again and again (most recently in my post about the newest NEA data), the classical music audience used to be much younger. (See also my special page on evidence for this.) So the people in the age groups that now dominate the audience (middle-aged and over) started going when they were young, and kept on going as they aged.

There's no evidence that they dropped out at any point. And one snapshot from the past makes the "latency" theory seem really silly. In 1966, the Twentieth Century Fund did a major study of the performing arts audience, and found it had a median age of 38, amazingly young compared to what we see now. That was true across all disciplines, including classical music. The authors of a book of the economics of the performing arts (also published by the Twentieth Century Fund) comment on this study, saying that the dominant fact of the audience is that it's young -- and then wondering why people stop going to performing arts events as they get older! Latency period? In 1966, at least, it clearly didn't exist.

So why would someone smart and eager, like Karin Brookes, either make something like this up, or pass it on after finding the idea elsewhere? I can sympathize, actually. She doesn't know that the classical music audience used to be young. As I've said, many people believe that.

So now, putting together everything she thinks is true, Brookes is faced with what seems like a contradiction. People who go to classical concerts were exposed to classical music when they were young. But they don't go to concerts much until they're older. How can we explain this? Maybe there's a period of latency, a time (in youth and early middle age), when our interest in classical music lies dormant!

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Until, that is, you learn what the truth really is.

(I've made this post to demonstrate the harm that comes -- in debates about the future of classical music -- from not having accurate data.)

Sorry for my silence here. I'm trying to find a livable rhythm for my life -- but then that's a long story. I've had a few projects that claimed priority time, and I haven't wanted to be obsessive about this blog. But I shouldn't neglect it, either.

When I posted some time ago about the new NEA stats, about attendance at classical music events, and their potentially dire implications for the future of mainstream classical music institutions, some people objected in comments and elsewhere that ticket sales didn't really matter that much. Live performances could be replaced by Internet events, went one theory, and donors would support that. The transition might even be starting to happen.

If only! Reminds me of newspapers. Someday, just maybe, they'll make their money online. But despite major attention to newspaper websites, the money isn't there yet. Nor is there any clear model for getting it there. And newspaper revenue -- still depending, just as in the old days, on advertising, including classified ads -- continues to tank.

Classical music isn't that dire yet (though I know one city where the CEO of the orchestra and the publisher of the newspaper make black-humor jokes about whose industry is in worse shape). But here's why the traditional classical music funding model -- which depends on live ticket sales -- still is in force.

Classical music institutions get their money from three sources. Earned income (which at this point is overwhelmingly from ticket sales), donations from individuals, and donations from institutions (mainly corporations and foundations; income from government grants is very small).

Earned income makes up -- approximately -- 25% to 40% of total revenue. Orchestras tend to get a lower percentage; opera companies tend to get a higher one. Of course this is a major chunk of the money these institutions need. Now remember that they're working full time -- more than full time -- to get the money, from all their sources. Remember that each year is a new challenge. Remember that donations don't come easily, and that the donor pool might be shrinking, rather than growing, because younger people -- just as they don't buy tickets to classical performances -- also don't tend to donate to classical music institutions, or in fact to any arts groups. Remember that if interest in classical music (as measured by the NEA data) seems to be declining, than donations should decline, along with ticket sales.

So how can an organization simply ramp up donations, if ticket sales fall? Try telling the development department that they have to raise a lot more money this year, because ticket sales are soft. They'll try to get the job done, but they won't tell you it's easy.

As for Internet revenue somehow making up for declining ticket sales, well, show me the money. The analogy with newspapers holds here. It's easy to generate lots of activity online, but the online activity doesn't as yet make much money, and I don't believe there's any model showing how someday it will. Downloads of classical music outstripped CD sales even when there still were record stores, but they made only a fraction of what CD sales earned.

And streaming performances? Well, they're live performances! And they cost a lot of money on top of the live performance, as the Met certainly demonstrates with its streaming to movie theaters, which looks like a smashing success, but took quite a while to break even. Will the movie showings ever bring the Met substantial income? No one knows yet.

And now let's look at donations. Where do they come from? Believe it or not, they come from live performances. This is the most crucial point I can make. Take individual donations. The donors, for the most part, are subscribers. And that's how classical music institutions find them. It[s a familiar mantra, for those who know the inside drill. You try to work with your single-ticket buyers, to make them subscribers. You work with your subscribers, to turn them into donors. You work with your donors to get them to give more and more, and finally to leave money for you in their wills. But it all starts with live performances. If people stop going to them, well, maybe you can find donors somewhere else, but the model for that doesn't yet exist.

That's especially true because one big reason that people donate -- and also that institutions donate -- is community pride. Corporate donations are almost always local. They come from local corporations, and from local branches of national and international companies. And what do you do to encourage corporations to donate? You bring their executives to performances, you introduce them to the music director, you wine them and dine them, give them boxes to sit in, and (along with other donors) a special place to go at intermission. You also plaster the corporation's name around the community. Individual donors -- especially large ones -- are wooed in much the same ways.

The entire fundraising effort is build around live performances, and more generally around the institution's real-time presence in the community. I've heard orchestras detail their plans for greater community involvement, more cooperation with other local institutions, more presence at local events, everywhere from schools to shopping malls. And why do they do this? To get people to donate more money.

I'll repeat my main point. Live performance income is only one part -- though a large part -- of classical music revenue. But donations, both individual and corporate, depend just as much on live performance. (This may be less true of foundation income, because there are national foundations that give to institutions all over the country. But foundation income, I believe, has been declining, and at any rate isn't as dependable or abundant as local individual and corporate donations.)

This how things are done now. Can it change? Maybe. Is there any sign -- of the tangible kind that shows up on balance sheets -- that the change is happening now? I don't think so. If anyone can show me that I'm wrong, I'd be happy to hear the reasons. But, please, give me numbers. Show me that some bright, attractive, brand-new, hopeful program from the XYZ Symphony really brings in money equivalent to what the old ways get -- and don't just speculate that it might bring in the cash; show me that it actually does -- and then I'll be convinced.

(Which means, if I'm right about this, that orchestras really might be as badly off as newspapers, or at least will be if we project current trends into the future. The current picture isn't nearly as bad. We don't see orchestras drowning in red ink yet, losing huge sums every year. We don't see some of the biggest orchestras going bankrupt, as some of the biggest newspapers have. And let's hope it never happens.)