Rugby World Cup: entry level ticket £150, highest £715
Kovacevich/Argerich, Wigmore Hall: entry level £17, highest £62
Barber of Seveille, Opera North: entry level £15, highest £68
Cav & Pag, Royal Opera: entry level £13, highest £250

The Passacaglia Test rather blows out of the water the misconception that concert and opera tickets are expensive!  A thorough and well-researched article, well worth reading.
 

Our friend Bill Anderton - who has been working very hard with entering all the listings on the new Chamber Music Plus website and also runs several of his own, including the Contemporary Music Project and his blog, www.billanderton.blogspot.co.uk, where you will find a piece about increasing audience numbers.

And here's some tips from Shoshana's Build My Audience blog from the other side of the music world (in several senses):

"Last night I was fortunate to see Billy Joel in concert at the Pepsi Center in Denver. Being a huge fan with the majority of his albums, I am kicking myself for not going to a concert sooner. I am glad I was finally able to witness how great he was with his audience engagement! Here is a list of some of the fun he had with the audience:

·        Audience choice moments - He gauged by applause which song out of two choices the audience wanted to hear next. He did this twice during the concert. Of course my pick was not the popular choice, since I wanted to hear the lesser known of the two choices, but the audience in general loved being engaged in this fashion!

·        Of course he let us take over on Piano Man for one of the choruses.

·        He shook hands with many of the people in the front row and signed two on the spot autographs. Lucky folks!

·        He was quick with a joke...

·        He talked conversationally the entire time. We, the audience, was part of the conversation!

·        He pulled in Colorado references all the time. Of course he played Billy the Kid: "Well, he started with a bank in Colorado."

·        The cameramen captured some fantastic audience footage. The audience sincerely loved every minute!

·        The set list drew from all aspects of his career which catered to the different generations of the audience.

·        The quality of the musicians, background media set, etc. was top notch!"

Many of us have had bad experiences with other audience members over the years - I feel particularly upset when I've taken a friend along to a performance and they've received a telling off (on one occasion for leaning forward, and the other for having noisy jewellery).  Gillian Moore has come up with some new rules for concert-going in an article for Sinfini:

1. Love the experience of sitting in a comfortable seat with no distractions, listening to glorious music for an hour or two.
2. If you don’t know the music, read up about it on the internet beforehand, or arrive early, get a drink and buy a programme. The more you put in, the more you get out.
3. When the music is playing, stay as silent as possible: there are often a lot of very quiet moments.
4. Check, double-check and check again that your mobile phone is switched off.
5. When the music stops, clap if you want to. There is a convention not to clap between movements, but it’s not a strict one.
6. Wear what you like.
7. Be nice to the person sitting next to you, even if they break one of the rules above. This might be their first concert.

Don't miss the comments below the article!  What do you think?

An article by David Lister in The Independent has started some discussion about concert programmes, and particularly those artist biographies which simply list venues, orchestras, conductors, repertoire...which can be very boring. 

"In this, the final week of the Proms, I had the pleasure of seeing the great German violin virtuoso Julia Fischer. She not only played brilliantly, but unlike some of her peers, had commanding stage presence. So, in the interval I paid my £4, and bought an official programme to find out more about her.

It was a mine of information. Useless information. It listed all the orchestras she had performed with “in recent seasons.” There they all were, from the Cleveland Orchestra to the Leipzig Gewandhaus and many others. But wait, there’s more. The next paragraph listed the orchestras she had played with “this season.” And in case you were wondering – I wasn’t – these included the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra to name but two."

I encourage my Concert Directory International/Davies Music singers to write more personal (and more interesting) biographies for themselves - and I've discovered all sorts of things about their lives outside music, from training for triathlons (Jeanette Ager) to appearing on the BBC's Top Gear singing "O sole mio" whilst being driven in a Maserati sports car by Michael Schumacher (Matthew Minter).

Should audiences have to pay for programmes or should they be free?  Some organisations make the notes available for download before the performance - and sometimes the information is frustratingly skimpy; I always want to know who the performers are!

Here's another article, this time from Susan Smith Ellis in The Guardian about the importance of images - and this is something that I find difficult to get across to people. 
"Why do people often get behind images more than words? According to researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the human brain can process entire images in as little as 13 milliseconds. Social media and content analysts will also tell you that visuals increase user engagement – in some reports, by as much as 94%. Images have the power to connect with people instantly and emotionally."

A good photograph is an essential part of any marketing attempt!

Thank you to Jessica Duchen for this:
• Two new reports have revealed the extent of the financial worth of the arts and creative industries to the UK economy. Arts Council England has published Contribution of the arts and culture sector to the national economy, written by CEBR (Centre for Economics and Business Research) at the same time as the Creative Industries Federation’s Arts and Growth: How public investment in the arts contributes to growth in the creative industries.

Key findings include:

• The gross value added (GVA) of the creative industries experienced growth between 2012-2013 of 9.9% – higher than any other industrial sector, including financial services;

• Our publicly invested arts still return 0.4% of the UK’s GVA and contribute indirectly to GVA through tourism, overseas trade and regional growth;

• Arts and culture is worth £7.7 billion GVA to our economy;

• Arts and culture industries generated £15.1 billion in turnover in 2012-13 – an increase of 26% since 2010;

• For every pound spent on arts and culture, an additional £1.06 is generated in the economy;

• More than one in 12 UK jobs are in the creative economy, with employment increasing 5% between 2013 and 2014, compared with a 2.1% jobs increase in the wider economy;

• Nevertheless, the UK invests a smaller percentage, 0.3%, of its total GDP on arts and culture than other countries. Germany is 0.4%, the EU as a whole 0.5%, Denmark 0.7% and France 0.8%.

Read the full article in Amati magazine here

Here's a report from the BBC on efforts by the Hallé Orchestra to bring in new audiences.

For their "Ten Pieces" concert on 6 September, tickets are pre-booked, and people pay what they want to at the end

John Summers, the Hallé's Chief Exec, says "We wanted to do an event which would bring in a new audience, people who thought classical music was not for them or had never been to a concert hall and were kind of scared by the whole rigmarole.  We are doing 10 pieces which actually start in 1700 and go through to the present day - roughly a piece every 35 years.

"We are specifically timing them so if you wanted to miss piece three and come back for piece four you'd know exactly when piece four starts.

"You can have a drink. You can go to the loo. The whole point it that people don't need to feel constrained by the normal concert etiquette.

"If they want to clap they can clap. We are also encouraging the orchestra to walk off the platform."

Some good ideas here though it does sound a bit complicated! 

Read more from BBC News and from Classical Music - which includes a short promotional video made by the Hallé.

Composer Kerry Andrew wrote a response to this in The Guardian which she summarises "So hats off to the Hallé, but let’s not forget that live music is well worth the investment of our time, love and, indeed, money."  - Well said Kerry!

There's a lot of talk about how classical music can be presented differently in order to attract new audiences.  The problem is, a lot of us think we like it the way it is done now...

A recent article on the Classic FM website gives some ideas of "ways to thrive and survive" from Kate Whitley and Christopher Stark of the Multi Story Orchestra -

1.  Never dumb down anything

2.  Think about how it looks to an outsider

3.  Be inventive with programming

4.  Don’t talk about classical music using words that no-one understands

5.  Be proud of what it is

Isn't that encouraging?  We don't actually have to change anything!

Classical Music Magazine reports that a study by UK Music has revealed that music tourism in 2014 contributed £3.1bn to the UK economy, with 9.5 million music tourists attending music events.  There was a 39% increase in the number of overseas music tourists between 2011 and 2014, with each spending an average of £751.

Together with some colleagues from Chamber Music Plus - a group of music societies mainly in the West Midlands - I am organising a workshop covering ways of marketing using the internet and social media.  I've recently come across some useful tips online - please follow the links below:

Glide Media Distribution's website includes a page on "How to combine print and social media marketing"

And Intranet Future lists "10 clever tips on increasing website visitors with social media"

I'd be pleased to hear about any other such online resources.

Another article from the excellent online magazine Sinfini reports that participating in musical activities is helping older people in England's North East combat loneliness.   "Survey results from the venue’s Silver Programme – a scheme set up in 2005 to encourage people aged between 50 and 90 to sing, learn and play instruments, and form their own bands – have revealed the startling impact of music-making on the health and wellbeing of participants. 

93 men and 294 women – 37 per cent of the total current participants in the programme – completed an eight-question survey last month, answering questions about the emotional, mental and physical impact of the scheme on their lives. Of these, 98 per cent believed that the programme had provided them with increased musical skills and opportunities, and 94 per cent agreed that it had stimulated them mentally."