The issue of ticket pricing is never far from the surface when we talk of the plight of professional nonprofit culture. One camp claims that prices are too high (also see Drew McManus’ discussion here)…driving away all but the most committed attendees. Another camp claims that prices are too low (an old article, I know), and that a higher proportion of earned income is the only hope for a vibrant future.
Peter Dobrin in the Philadelphia Inquirer seems to see high prices as the root of all evil, suggesting:
If Philadelphia Orchestra tickets went for between $7.50 and $40 today, the orchestra would have to add concerts to meet demand.
[I’m guessing that if Mr. Dobrin got the low-price strategy he asked for, seats would still go empty, and the symphony would soon go broke.]
In the theater world, the Theatre Communications Group is encouraging a National Free Night of Theatre on October 20, to entice new audiences into the seats.
Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, a free ticket offer from the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre is leading many to think the organization is in desperate straits (of course, they have other reasons to think so). Says one subscriber who was offered free additional tickets to bring a friend:
”The first thing I thought was they are desperate for an audience. They must realize that a number of people are not going to come.”
At the middle of the struggle is the dual role (at least) of pricing in the consumer’s mind. Higher price is a barrier to entry, to be sure, especially if the consumer doesn’t attach a high value to the experience (hmmmmmm). At the same time, price can serve as a key indicator of quality…an expensive car must be better than an inexpensive car because it costs more. Throw into the mix that those who do value the experience highly will pay almost any cost to attend, and can serve as an essential element of the organization’s financial sustainability.
The answer is, as always, somewhere in between the extremes…charging high prices to those that can and will pay them, and radically discounting for those that won’t (aka, yield management). Arts organizations have done this a little for a long time (scaling the house, etc.). But they’ve only just begun to explore how to really work the system (this guy is thinking about it a lot).
Until we do, we’ll all continue to rail about price as the key element of our success or failure. And if we’re not careful, we’ll forget that price is just a symptom of a larger problem that’s much more productive to talk about: the perceived value of what we have to offer.
Because I’m not really qualified to comment intelligently about the subject of ticket pricing, I’ll limit what I have to say about the side issue of arts and perceived value. As a violinist, concert-maker, occasional recording artist, cinema, live ballet and theatre goer, as well as, contrarily, a graduate of a web design and development College course in Canada, I know what’s involved in digital art versus live art. I know some of the differences in what is valued, who the stakeholders are in an event’s production/creation, what comprises the essential work to make the ‘product’ and what communication between fellow workers and the future audience means in the different worlds.
I believe that conversations about the differences between live arts events and the digitized world of non-live arts equivalents, which is consuming entertainment news media conversations today are strongly influencing perceived value and must be developed further into conversations about live versus media arts. Ticket prices are problems for shows and concerts because elsewhere in the market we are visibly fighting about the value of downloaded music and movies and getting what we deserve from radio and TV repeats. Where our attention and arguments focus actually builds value in the public mind.
I think we have deceived ourselves into calling the digitized versions of each artform equivalents of their ‘sister’ live art, and then we’ve spent valuable time trying to protect and wage war against money made from the dollars that “consumers” spend on arts copies. By copies I mean DVD copies of shows and movies, CD recordings of music. (Interestingly, the visual arts world hasn’t yet lost awareness of the difference between a painting and a JPEG).
However, no performance organization or arts union I know about has ever seriously challenged the powerful assumption that digital versions of live art are equal-in-nature-and-value replacements of live art.
“I’ll wait for the DVD.” “I’d rather stay home and listen to my CD of the symphony.” “Oh, don’t go to the show, I have a video of it!” “Isn’t Pride and Prejudice a great story? I saw it twice.”
Several years ago I was struck by the difference in the ads for audio equipment in UK music mags, and US music mags. In the USA mags, the gist of all the ads was “bring the concert experience into your own home”. In the UK ads, the orientation was “We ALL know that the concert hall is the best place to hear music, but when circumstances prevent you from going, this audio system is a close second.”