Audience Growth Resources

• NEW JULY 2024: While individual orchestras’ experiences vary, overall ticket revenue has now risen significantly above pre-pandemic levels. Orchestra patrons are spending more per visit than pre-pandemic, but are attending less frequently, eroding opportunities for orchestras to build engagement and loyalty. Read the latest data trends (ticket sales and revenue, and donation units and revenue) from the League’s partnership with TRG Arts.
• The orchestra field continues to lose older audience members faster than it is gaining younger, new audience members: read more about the long-term trajectories framing current activity in this blog post from IMPACTS Experience.
• Benchmark your own orchestra’s audience data: sign up to participate at no cost in the TRG Arts’ Arts & Culture Benchmark, offered in partnership with the League.

• NEW JULY 2024: New research has highlighted significant opportunities to build engagement and trust among patrons.
• NEW JULY 2024: Current patrons (both subscribers and single ticket buyers) are eager to deepen their understanding of the music performed, with relevant context and commentary. Read more from a WolfBrown study of U.S. orchestras undertaken in partnership with the League. Dive deeper into the topic through loyalty concept research commissioned by the National Arts Center of Canada.
• NEW JULY 2024: Classical music is part of a rich landscape of varied musical interests: research from Slover Linett encourages us to connect with future audiences by understanding the rising significance of emotion and personal narrative to musical consumption.  
• NEW JULY 2024: Recent research from IMPACTS Experience highlights 2020 as a turning point for Americans’ perceptions of arts and culture organizations. At this time, many arts organizations expanded their civic role in response to the pandemic. Today, arts and culture organizations are trusted as mission-driven, credible sources of information that people look to inform their choices and behaviors. And this significant shift provides opportunities for orchestras to build and deepen their relationships with patrons and other community members.
• NEW JULY 2024: These opportunities are countered by challenges. In 2024 only 52.8% of all Americans believe that symphony orchestras are “welcoming to people like me,” a figure that is lower than for any type of museum. While orchestras have been making efforts to become more welcoming, they are seeing limited progress so far when compared to other cultural organizations. In addition, “couch competition” has developed into a long-term, post-pandemic trend. Hear more about the trend towards staying home in the evening and at weekends from Capacity Interactive, and from IMPACTS Experience.

• Read how engaging current audiences in your mission is a far better strategy for optimizing subscription renewals and donations than offering transactional perks (from IMPACTS Experience). And listen to Colleen Dillenschneider and Priya Iyer discuss the critical importance of mission-based digital programming and social media endorsement as an audience driver.
• NEW JULY 2024: Hear what wine-tasting and birdwatching have to do with orchestra audiences in this episode of Capacity Interactive’s podcast, featuring Holly Mulcahy of the Wichita Symphony Orchestra.
• With tourism back to pre-pandemic levels, understanding visitor decision-making priorities can help you to get your organization on visitors’ agenda before they leave home.

• NEW JULY 2024: Digital marketers: discover unique advantages and opportunities for smaller budget arts organizations from CI to Eye Podcasts Your Cultural Compass and Your 2024 Digital Priorities. For insights specific to orchestras, watch the League webinar Maximizing Video in your Orchestra’s Digital Strategy.
• NEW JULY 2024: Listen to PIVOT, a podcast by Ruth Hartt which explores customer-centric strategies for arts marketing. Episodes showcase guests from the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, Portland’s Classical Uprising, and more.
• Visit CultureHive for a wealth of free marketing resources focused on audience growth, from marketing beyond your core audience to telling your story in 6 seconds. 
• For more on social media behavior among arts and culture audiences, read IMPACTS Experience’s blog posts, which answer the question, “Which social media channel is the most important for cultural organizations?”
• For more practical strategies, read Capacity Interactive’s guides to ticket pricing for unpredictable times, engaging with ticket buyers through social media, and making the most of Google analytics.

• Learn from two research studies from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Morris Hargreaves McIntyre, both showing how specific tactics ranging from dress code to concert length can make the orchestra experience more attractive to potential new audience members.
• NEW JULY 2024: Read a Symphony feature on how the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is putting these principles into practice, creating a more attractive orchestra experience for potential new audience members.

Pandemic audience trends varied widely across the U.S. While some orchestras experienced little to no decline in ticket sales between the 2019 and 2023 seasons, many saw a 25% drop in ticket sales, and some as much as 40%. Those seeing less decline were more likely to be based in states where in-person performance was not interrupted by the pandemic.

• This 2022 League report created in partnership with the Advisory Board for the Arts explored ticket sales and revenues in the aftermath of the pandemic. 
• Of the 78% of audience members ready to return to live performance, as of November 2022 60% had not yet seen a program they wanted to attend. Hear more about audience attitudes to returning – and not returning – from Alan Brown (WolfBrown) in the December 2022 Executive Briefing that draws on data collected in partnership with the League.
• Digital has potential: for insights into the skyrocketing of online views of classical music content during the pandemic,listen to this podcast from Capacity Interactive.
• Increasing competition from travel, vacations, and movies in the post-pandemic years affected orchestras: intentions to attend an orchestra performance are were only just slightly higher in 2023 than in 2022. Read more from IMPACTS Experience.
• Read about post-pandemic barriers to attending an arts or culture event, associated with travel costs and scheduling conflicts, via IMPACTS Experience.