The Shifting Sands of Demand

Arts participation occurs against a backdrop of changing leisure patterns and a quicksilver notion in the public psyche of what constitutes an enjoyable evening out. Drawing on a wide range of arts industry research and my own observations about the larger environment in which arts groups operate, I would like to share six interrelated macro trends affecting audience behaviors and demand for arts programming, and invite you to think about what it means for your organization and the future of the arts industry.

1. Divergence of Expectations

The criteria for a successful entertainment experience changes along with values and lifestyles. Some people want to fully engage and learn something every time they go out, while others idealize a more passive, disconnected experience. A precious few seek the challenge of unfamiliar art, while many more prefer the comfort of revisiting familiar works.

Very little is known about the hierarchy of decisionmaking or how satisfaction affects future attendance, except that it does. Strangely, some people will go to arts events that they would never choose for themselves if the right person invites them. In their decision tree, the value of spending time with a friend is more important than the particulars of the program. As the range of sophistication levels in the audience widens over time, so do expectations for fulfillment. And so the ability of an arts organization to satisfy its community with one type of artistic product gets more and more difficult.

2. The New Calculus of Risk

Rather than spending $20 for balcony seats at five performances, more people will spend $100 for a great seat to a single must-see show. This is not peculiar to the entertainment sector, but part of a larger trend towards trading up" to premium products and experiences: As the price of admission goes up, the willingness to risk an unsatisfactory experience goes down. Broadway producers charge unthinkable prices for priority seating—opera companies and museums have traded handsomely on this trend. Although orchestras and choruses have had their own version of blockbuster works for generations—Beethoven's Ninth, Carmina Burana, and Messiah—they have yet to claim their share of blockbuster pricing.

3. Diffusion of Cultural Tastes

As part of the natural evolution of creative processes, more artists are collaborating across disciplines and cultures. The product of this cross-pollination is often difficult to categorize. And as the boundaries around the art forms continue to blur, more and more consumers care less and less about the boundaries.

Meanwhile, we have constructed cultural institutions—whole industries, in fact—around strict definitions of the art forms that are increasingly irrelevant. Consumers experience art along a continuum from "popular" to "high art." How does one even quantify "classical" music? In a world where iPod Shuffle is the dominant mode of music listening, is it really surprising the musical tastes are more eclectic now than they were 10 or 20 years ago? Yet, most arts groups have not considered how to adapt their programming to changing tastes. The bottom line is that consumers don't put us in the boxes into which we put ourselves.

Mass communication and digital media enhance the speed of this amalgamation. Within the realm of music, the download phenomenon represents a critical shift in how people develop preferences for different kinds of music and zero in on their favorite artists. More people have access to more art. Consequently, more people are able to experience the art of cultures and time periods other than their own—the globalization of art from all eras. And more people have highly developed preferences—a better sense of what they like and perhaps a growing awareness of what they're missing. Hence the conundrum of both broadening and narrowing tastes, as consumers are more able to search the vast artistic landscape, try out a lot of art in order to find exactly what they like, and then compile it to their own satisfaction.

4. Demand for More Customized Experiences

Much of music's allure to consumers derives from the relative ease with which it can be curated by the listener. In focus groups, music lovers describe how they listen to one kind of music for vacuuming, another kind for cooking, another kind for exercising, and so forth. Consumers understand what it means to be your own curator and derive great satisfaction from arranging art around them to the satisfaction of their own aesthetic—especially music and visual art.

Anyone with TiVo or digital cable service knows about customization of entertainment experiences—you choose what to watch and when you want to watch it. Similarly, many retailers, in order to survive, have embraced business strategies that empower each customer to create something unique, with value built around convenience, flexibility, and choice. Against this backdrop, most arts groups offer a pre-set program at a fixed time in a single location and ask you to buy it six months or more in advance.

Control over one's time also leads to shorter planning horizons, and with the decline of advance commitment so goes the subscription model. Not everyone wants to "get married." Today's audiences are asking, "Can't we just date?" While many arts groups once had a reliable forecast of attendance and were able to finance cash flow with advance sales from subscriptions, that luxury is slipping away for many groups. Consumers are making their decisions later and later, placing a premium on flexibility as their lives get more complicated. They are keeping options open until the last minute, a premium for which some may be willing to pay, others not.

5. Expectation for Multi-Sensory Engagement

The standard for visual enhancement of live performances is high and going higher, with technological advances in lighting and real-time digital image reproduction. The lighting and special effects productions at large-scale concerts by pop stars are breathtaking and a vital part of the total experience. One could argue that the visualization of choral and symphonic music is still in its infancy, but digital remixing of music visualizations will be standard fare at our concerts. Think Fantasia, only live.

As the velocity and diversity of visual, aural, tactile, and other stimuli in our lives increase, so the brain learns to accommodate them. Parents marvel at how their children can do homework on a computer while simultaneously listening to the radio or watching television. It is commonplace now to see people reading while listening to their iPods, two fundamentally different and demanding cognitive exercises. In the age of IMAX films and surround-sound in-home theater, it is truly amazing that anyone at all drives to live performances.

6. Desire for More Intense Experiences

The sum of all these trends is higher demand for more intense and more pleasurable leisure and learning experiences. The threshold for satisfaction rises faster and faster. Kids who grew up with interactive museum exhibits and video games are now hyper-stimulated adult consumers driving the experience economy. How will arts organizations capture the fecund imagination and febrile pace of the next generation of experience seekers?

Our job as leaders of performing arts institutions is to create filters that help people make choices. We must emphasize social context, improve the "total customer experience," give our customers more choices to make, connect to their personal creativity at home and work, and engage them.

The answer, in part, relates to our ability to harness the power of social networking tools and to provide audiences with "things to pass along" to their friends and family members such as audio files or digital photographs, and opportunities to interact both in person and electronically with artists and other patrons. And yes, soon it will be time to permit and even encourage patrons to use their cell phone cameras during performances because the images and texts they capture will create memory, enhance impact, and fuel word-of-mouth.

We are world cultural citizens. The movement for sustainable environmental change advocates the purchase of local goods and services, but unfortunately when it comes to music and art we cannot confine our audiences to local brands. Our job as leaders of performing arts institutions is to create filters that help people make choices. We must emphasize social context, improve the "total customer experience," give our customers more choices to make, connect to their personal creativity at home and work, and engage them.

Innovation at times may be slow and fitful, but innovate we must. Trends are moving people farther and farther away from fixed, static experiences. No arts organization is immune to the shifting sands of demand. Great art is at once both delicate and exceedingly resilient. The live performance experience, we have learned, cannot be duplicated. But the standard and expectation for multi-sensory stimulation at all types of live entertainment experiences continues to rise, inescapably.

How is your chorus coping with the rapidly changing landscape of cultural participation?

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This article is adapted from the special audience issue of The Voice, Spring 2011, "The Face of Today's Audience."