{"id":1296,"date":"2017-01-26T22:39:21","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T06:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/?p=1296"},"modified":"2017-01-30T06:00:36","modified_gmt":"2017-01-30T14:00:36","slug":"are-orchestras-a-ticket-or-an-art-maybe-were-thinking-about-the-made-up-model-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2017\/01\/are-orchestras-a-ticket-or-an-art-maybe-were-thinking-about-the-made-up-model-wrong.html","title":{"rendered":"Are Orchestras A Ticket Or An Art? Maybe We’re Thinking About The (Made Up) Model Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>As recently as 1990, American symphony orchestras accounted for an average of 60 percent of their budgets in earned income. This meant, at the time, that if you weren’t selling enough tickets (and other services) to make 60 percent, then you weren’t considered healthy. A report in 1991 – The Financial Condition of Symphony Orchestras<\/a> – conducted by The Wolf Organization, said that attendance at orchestra concerts between 1970 and 1990 had increased 53% (from 17.5 million to 27 million) and the number of concerts had increased\u00a0by 39% (to 18,000 from 13,000 concerts).<\/p>\n

A few months ago The League of American Orchestras reported <\/a>that in 2014 orchestras produced 28,000 concerts in front of an audience of 25 million. So a 55 percent increase in number of concerts over 24 years but a slight decline in total audience of about 7.4 percent.<\/p>\n

The biggest change\u00a0in the numbers was in the percentage of earned income – from 60 percent in 1990 to 40 percent in 2014 – a decline of a third. So now if you aren’t making 40 percent of your budget at the box office, you’re not succeeding at the model.<\/p>\n

That sounds shocking. Dismal. A quote:<\/p>\n

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