The Spring for Music orchestral music festival scheduled to launch this May at Carnegie Hall has a range of bold goals — to foster programming innovation and laser focus among a select group of orchestras, to build excitement about orchestral repertoire in a crowded urban market, to draw attention to the diversity of the nation’s orchestras (in programming, artistic philosophy, ensemble approach) rather than their similarities.
But since I’m equally intrigued by the business side of the equation (embedded in their extensive mission statement), I’m equally interested in the financial structure of the new festival. In a nutshell:
- All tickets will be single tickets, at $25 each, with no subscriptions. No individual can purchase more than eight tickets to a single performance.
- Each participating orchestra will receive an equal fee, regardless of their expense or the scale of their program, and regardless of the audience for their program. That fee will be an equal share of net ticket sales receipts for the entire festival. The guaranteed share is $50,000.
- On the cost side, each participating orchestra will provide the services of its orchestra, conductors and soloists, plus all transportation, hotel and per diem costs for personnel and equipment, as well as costs of all musical preparation.
- Each participating orchestra can also buy up to 1,000 tickets at $25 on a non-refundable basis for resale in their home markets (it’s not clear if they’re allowed to sell those tickets at a premium, or at cost).
- Sponsors of the event will receive recognition not just during the festival, but in the home markets of the orchestras selected.
In essence, the festival is an exercise is managing and leveraging risk.
- For the audience, a $25 flat fee ticket mediates risk of trial — they get an orchestra selected for its artistic and programming merit at a flat fee.
- For the orchestra, a share of the TOTAL festival proceeds mediates the risk of their own programming — they are more likely to take a risk if their income isn’t entirely dependent on them drawing a traditional crowd. Further, the $50,000 guarantee offers a baseline for their comfort (although it likely doesn’t come near to covering their costs).
- For the festival, the risk of covering the full cost of content is capped at $350,000 (the combined guarantees of the seven orchestras). They still have significant festival expenses — the venue, the marketing, the administration — but the extraordinary risk of presenting seven national orchestras is effectively reduced.
- For the sponsors, the risk of supporting yet another New York cultural event is mediated by their concurrent support for ‘home town’ orchestras around the country.
Of course, there’s lots to be unbundled in all the assumptions about risk and cost above. And since they’re running all the variables at once, it will be difficult to untangle what we’re learning along the way. But it will be fascinating to watch not only the programmatic risks each orchestra decides to take, but also the audience reaction, and the bottom-line mathematics of what the orchestras (and the festival) spend or gain from the effort.
Thank you for the article and the link that sent me to the Spring website.
I have a online ticketing application called Ticketbud. We created it to help artists, charaties, and organizations be able to do ticketing themselves without getting hit with needless fees. I get excited when artists, being one myself, use TB to drive their next event to bring in more profits and avoid a complicated registration process.
I would love for an amazing event like this music festival to benefit from our user-friendly service. We specialize in local events that bring in 500 guests and below. I would be curious to what your thoughts are about the potential of events like this using http://www.ticketbud.com to sell tickets online.
Thank you for all you do for artists. I personally appreciate it.
John
Thanks so much for this insight on the Spring for Music festival— such an interesting example of rethinking assumptions to fit a new mission.
I was especially intrigued when I went to their page to buy tickers– the whole structure of the “Virtual Line” seemed innovative– separating out hometown fans from others, asking for trivia, and allowing people to be inventive– all as ways to ‘earn’ a privileged place in line. Both the cognoscenti and the curious and be special, by adding effort that jumpstarts engagement. What a win!