{"id":47,"date":"2008-07-31T12:40:14","date_gmt":"2008-07-31T12:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp\/?p=47"},"modified":"2008-07-31T12:40:14","modified_gmt":"2008-07-31T12:40:14","slug":"not_so_ez_street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/2008\/07\/not_so_ez_street\/","title":{"rendered":"Not so eZ street"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think I am the only member of The League of American Orchestras<\/a> who joined solely so I could receive their daily In the News<\/i> e mails. They’re somehow comforting to me, even though some of the headlines are ripe for parody (there was one about classical music and improvising once that was a real gem). <\/p>\n

Yesterday, In the News<\/i> alerted me to this initiative by The Philadelphia Orchestra<\/a>. Here is the blurb:<\/p>\n

In today’s (7\/30) Philadelphia Inquirer, Peter Dobrin writes about the ways the Philadelphia Orchestra is trying to deal with “subscriber drain.” “This fall it will unveil its most radical change yet: a membership program that combines PhillyCarShare’s last-minute flexibility with amazon.com’s marketing acumen and maybe some of Starbucks’ get-it-anyway-you-want-it solicitousness. The new program is called eZseat. Once you’re a member, you can buy a ticket at a 25 percent discount at almost any time–from an hour before a concert to nine months before curtain. Different membership levels carry different benefits. A $50 annual membership allows access to orchestra-level seats in Verizon Hall; $75 for both first-tier box and orchestra-level seats. The program, whose research and development was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Neubauer Family Foundation, will exist solely online. Members can print out their tickets, whose bar codes will be scanned at concerts by ushers.” J. Edward Cambron, the orchestra’s vice president for marketing and public relations, helped create eZseat “as a response to increasing resistance to the old subscription model. … eZseat, he says, provides the ‘ownership’ factor of subscriptions, the benefits, but more flexibility.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Did they have to call it eZseat? Really? Really?<\/i><\/p>\n

I appreciate 1. their admission that the subscription model is dying a slow and painful death and 2. the decision to actually do something about it, rather than complain to management that “the artists aren’t selling”, etc.. That said, what’s most interesting to me, here – and what the Inquirer piece<\/a> didn’t cover, unfortunately – is how the orchestra will actually market their marketing scheme. I’ve found more and more that even when organizations have great marketing initiatives, they don’t spend the time or money to market them to the right people, which is almost, but not quite, as bad as not creating the new programs in the first place. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think I am the only member of The League of American Orchestras who joined solely so I could receive their daily In the News e mails. They’re somehow comforting to me, even though some of the headlines are ripe for parody (there was one about classical music and improvising once that was a real […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-47","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}