Mahler Meets Moneyball? Probably Not.

There’s an interesting article by Tom Jacobs in the 5/21/2013 edition of psmag.com which reports on a recent study designed to determine which works have more gravitas when it comes to selling tickets. Overall, it’s a good read but along with the good is some not-so-good that should be more than enough to take everything with a grain of salt.

I haven’t read the report but having crossed paths with similar studies and based on what’s available in the abstract, I’ll go out on a limb and offer up the following.

someone outside the field is paying attention to the fieldwhen taken in the right context, there’s likely some good reference materialcopious amount of five dollar wordsthe report is stuck behind a paywalldata used is nearly 10 years oldlack of practical, real world applicationcopious amount of five dollar words

The article brought to mind an case where an orchestra received some outside consulting from a prestigious business school that studied existing ticket sales data and local metrics with an eye toward improving earned income.

The final report suggested the orchestra was undervaluing its product and the authors recommended sharp price increases.

Anyone care to guess what that course of action actually produced?

In short, increases were applied but the earned income increase forecast never materialized. The real kick in the pants is everyone in the office below the highest pay grade knew that wasn’t the right answer and didn’t want to go in that direction but decisions were made otherwise.

That doesn’t mean the report wasn’t useful but at the same time, it doesn’t mean it was something that should be adopted out of hand. Consequently, you’re probably in a good place if you adopt a similar approach to this recent effort.

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house. I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why. In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu. For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, and love a good coffee drink.

View the original article here