Orchestras and New Media

Orchestras and New Media

“Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.”

By Marc van Bree. Version 1.0

Road Map

The Changing Print Environment and the New Media Revolution

SWOT Analysis: Orchestras and New Media

New Media: Tools of the Trade

Measuring Results

The Changing Print Environment and the New Media Revolution

From slow and stationary to fast and mobile

“At the Chicago Tribune, the daily Tempo section, which contains arts, culture, media and technology, represented only 5 percent of the papers pagination.”

National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University “Reporting the Arts II”

Art in print. In proportion.

“While more Americans are participating in cultural activities than at any time in our history, and although the arts have evolved to unprecedented size and complexity, the resources that metropolitan newsrooms allocate to the arts are generally flat or in retreat.”

Culture up. Resources down.


4,700

4,800

4,900

5,000

5,100

5,200

5,300

5,400

5,500

5,600

1998 2003

Column inches about arts in 20 newspapers around the country

Column Inches

Column inches declining


Full-time classical music critic positions eliminated over the past couple of years:

• Los Angeles Times• Chicago Sun-Times• Miami Herald• Minneapolis Star Tribune• Kansas City Star• Seattle Times• And more…

Music critics: a disappearing breed

“[…] it would be an error to attribute this dispiriting attrition to a philistine attack on the arts, or to focus too much on its meaning for cultural pursuits. The de-criticization of American journalism is a symptom of a much deeper tragedy in civic life: the lunatic suicide of the press.”

The lunatic suicide of the press

Justin Davidson, critic for New York Magazine and former critic of Newsday, in an article for Musical America

45,000

47,000

49,000

51,000

53,000

55,000

57,000

59,000

61,000

63,000

65,000

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80

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81

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01

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06

Total Paid Circulation in Thousands

It’s not just anecdotes

Statistics from the Newspaper Association of America show a decline in circulation numbers since the mid 1980s; from a daily circulation of over 63 million in 1984 to a daily circulation of 52 million in 2006.

Newspaper Association of America

The good news: the Internet

Monthly unique visitor numbers for newspaper Web sites rose from 41 million in January 2004 to 69 million in May 2008.

In active reach percentages, numbers rose from 27.5% to 41.7%.

Newspaper Association of America

A shift in strategy

“A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed.”

What is today’s Internet?

The Cluetrain Manifesto

Terms such as new media, social media and Web 2.0 are used to describe the Internet’s move to more:

• Participation (encourage contributions)

• Openness (no barriers to content and feedback)

• Conversation (listening, not just broadcasting)

• Community (gather around a common interest)

• Connectedness (content sharing)

What does this mean?

Icrossing’s What is Social Media?

“[…]an invigorated conversation about the arts, a built-in audience of readers who have been betrayed by the local paper and the beginnings of a strategy for surviving the implosion of traditional news.”

What can new media mean for the arts?

Justin Davidson, critic for New York Magazine and former critic of Newsday, in an article for Musical America

Brand and media proliferation

Brand proliferationIn the 1990s, the number of brands on grocery store shelves tripled from 15,000 to 45,000

Media proliferation13,500 radio stations (4,400 in 1960)17,300 magazine titles (8,400 in 1960)82.4 TV channels per home (5.4 in 1960)…and billions of Web pages

Weng Wah Wong. Social Media and Marketing: Evolution or Revolution. On Slideshare

Messages getting lost in the noise

34%

24%

13%

9%

1965 1974 1981 2000

Percent of adult evening viewers who can name a brand advertised in show just watched

Weng Wah Wong. Social Media and Marketing: Evolution or Revolution. On Slideshare.

“More than just realizing that they have lost some of the control over their audience they once enjoyed, organizations must embrace the relationships they have with their customers and work twice as hard to make sure the information customers are using to form their opinions comes from the organization.

Be their steward

Brian Reich and Dan Solomon. Media Rules!

Customers want help, they want to be led—and organizations can, and should, fill that need. You must be their steward.”

New media:Tools of the trade

New vs. old

Old InternetYou look for content

New InternetContent is delivered to you

Syndication and RSS

Web or RSS feeds are the standard method of distributing dynamic content to subscribers.

Dynamic content can include: blog posts, newspaper or magazine articles, news releases, audio files and videos.

Whenever you see the image to your right, you know you can subscribe to the content.

Syndication and RSS

Create your own newspaper

Use a service such as Bloglines or Google Reader to pull together a collection of Web feeds, which is known as aggregation, and customize your own news experience.

Tagging is the core social element of many Web 2.0 services. Tags, or key words, can make content searchable and findable. Tags can make content social.

The buzzword for this phenomenon is “folksonomy,” which translates to “user generated classification.” Users tag and categorize data and create new ways to find information.

Tagging and folksonomy

Tagging in action

The editors of Chicagoist.com use a special “chicagoist” tag in Flickr, an image hosting service, so that their readers can share and mark photos that might be interesting for Chicagoist’sreaders and blog posts.

Tagging and folksonomy

Blogging

A blog, short for weblog, is a Web site with regular entries on any topic imaginable, an online journal.

Important questions for organizations are “how does our organization connect with bloggers?” and “why should our organization blog?”

Blogging: key elements

Opennessno barriers to content, news and information

Participation andConversationblogs are a two-way street with feedback and discussions

Community andConnectednesslinking, tagging and sharing with a community of similar interests

Connecting with blogs

Consider this: how did your organization connect with your hometown newspaper and local journalists?

Read (know who is writing and what they are

writing)

Participate (comment first, pitch later)

Build relationships (provide the same level

of service you would provide a journalist)

Adapt materials (if you think journalists are

weary of press releases… personalize your pitch and remember you are working with a multi-media outlet)

Drew McManus. How to Connect With New Media. On Adaptistration.

Why Blog?

Culture (does your organization have particular cultural traits worth revealing?)

Transparency (transparency is crucial to establishing credibility and trust)

Time (it takes a lot of time to set up, research, write and engage)

Dialogue (ability and willingness to engage with the community)

Writing Style and Personalization (bring a human side to a blog)

Keeping up with the Joneses is not the right answer; there should be a strategic objective for starting a blog. If you’re not sure why, perhaps you shouldn’t be starting a blog.

Institutional Info Blog(blogs that distribute news about the organization)

Community Content Blog(blogs that take the content and offerings of the organization and try to open it up to community input)

Specialized Content Blog(blogs that are typically linked to a special event or festival)

Personal Voice Blog(blogs in which individuals or a small panel of staff offer personal commentary about their organization).

Institutional blogs

http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/

Digital storytelling

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of blogs, content communities and other social media services is the opportunity to tell a digital story and give others the opportunity to tell your organization’s story.

Content to be shared and syndicated

When you tell your story or want others to tell it for you:

“Create content that is designed to be syndicated, to be absorbed by other venues and promoted widely. Don’t just deliver prepackaged stuff. Offer information to people that can be reproduced and redelivered, raw materials that can be molded to match almost any situation.”

Brian Reich and Dan Solomon. Media Rules!

New media tools: youtube

Social content communities

Videos on YouTube, images on Flickr, they can all tell a story. “Tag and title your videos with relevant keywords—that’s how users will find your content as they navigate YouTube.”

Make content social: sharing, user ratings and information filtering presents media that are of likely interest to other users; feedback and discussions opens up conversation.

http://www.youtube.com/t/ngo_tips

New media tools: del.icio.us

Social bookmarking

Follow stories online and keep track of conversations on the Web. And share alike.

Users store, organize, search and manage bookmarks of Web pages. Each bookmark is accompanied by a tag or several tags, making your content searchable and findable.

New media tools: twitter

Micro-blogging

Sound bite stories: Twitter allows the user to post short (up to 140 characters) messages for the public to see in a process called micro-blogging.

Twitter’s uses are multiple: networking, sharing information but also conversation monitoring (even if you’re not ready to jump in the conversation yourself, you can monitor what is being said about your organization)

New media tools: yelp

Social city guide

People’s stories: online city guides now combine yellow pages, city guides and social networks with user-generated content.

Users can find, review and talk about places, restaurants, doctors and anything local.

New media tools: wikipedia

Social encyclopedia

Allows users (not employees!) to freely contribute to or edit content, operating on the philosophy that the more users participate, the better the content.

The collective intelligence empowers the community.

A credible story.

New media tools: last.fm

Social music

Ultimately, for orchestras, music is the story. Through recommendations, users are presented information items (movies, music, books, news, images, Web pages) that are likely of interest to them.

A recommender system compares the user’s profile to some reference characteristics. These characteristics may come from user input or the user’s social environment.

New media tools: social networks

Image: http://www.esv.org/assets/blog/2007.01.nt.social.network.big.png

Social networks

Social network services are the embodiment of Web 2.0; more than any other service they encourage participation, openness, conversation, community, and connectedness on the Internet.

Just as telephone, fax and e-mail changed the way we communicate; social networking has revolutionized our conversations and social interactions.

Social networks: key elements

Openness andCommunity

A public profile serves as a base from which the users build a network of friends and contacts.


Connectedness and community

Relationships and connections are no longer hidden; you know who your friends’ friends are.

Opening up professional (LinkedIn) and personal (Facebook) opportunities.


Participation and conversation

An MTV/Nickelodeon study found that “despite the remarkable advances in communication technology, kid and youth culture looks surprisingly familiar, with almost all young people using technology to enhance rather than replace face-to-face interaction.”

http://sev.prnewswire.com/multimedia-online-internet/20070724/NYTU10924072007-1.html


Openness and connectedness

Openness without barriers to content (photos, streaming audio etc.) and conversation (comments and discussion).

And connectedness through sharing content and links with your community.

Why social networks?

Social networks enhance a user’s life by being accommodating through constant connectivity, on-demand content and expanding social capital.

Social networks: key approach

Provide content to be

shared and syndicated

Add value to a user’s time

and life

Online relationships complement

offline relationships

SWOT analysis:Orchestras and New Media

A good start in sizing up an organization’s situation and crafting a strategy is the SWOT analysis, which appraises a company’s resource strengths and weaknesses and its external opportunities and threats.

SWOT analysis: strengths

Materials and media• Vast amount of interesting (archival) content to share with its constituents; many materials are easily accessible or adaptable to the new media environment;• Expertise in producing media and content (audio, program notes, knowledgeable employees and intellectual capital in regards to content);• Facilities and human assets to create content (recording studios, high profile guest artists);• Strong global distribution capabilities.

Engaged and involved audience • Orchestra audiences are involved and engaged with the product; pride, participation and community are important factors in audience experiences; • Strong, involved market; classical music has an enormously strong and engaged community.

Established infrastructure, sites and places • A powerful brand name within the community, country or world;• Extensive and established Web sites; • Established as an authoritative and credible organization;• Classical music is established on the Internet with several communities;

SWOT analysis: weaknesses

Financial resources• Budgets are stretched beyond facility; a weak balance sheet;• Short on financial resources to grow the business and pursue promising initiatives.

Human resources• New media is unchartered territory for many organizations; no intellectual capital or knowledgeable employees to make effective use of new media;• Non-profit job descriptions are stretched and wide-ranging; very few to no orchestras have employed a new media person. Questions as to who is responsible for new media and how much time is devoted to new media.

Contracts and Copyright• Musician contracts and copyright laws prevent full and open use of materials and media

SWOT analysis: opportunitiesOpenings to exploit emerging new technologies• New media can significantly extend the life a performance, reaching more patrons and increasing customer service;• Online relationships work best when there is an established offline relationship. Online relationships will complement and add value to an offline relationship.

Expanding into new geographic markets and serving additional market segments• The Internet is not bound by geography; patrons and fans from all over the world can enjoy a geographically confined orchestra outside of limited tours and recordings;• Changes in social patterns online; 64% of teens are online content creators, therein lies a great opportunity to connect with a new market segment.

Openings to win market share from rivals• Through a wide geographic coverage and strong global distribution capabilities, orchestras can capture market share from rivals that are not represented in new media.

Entering into alliances or joint ventures to expand the organization’s market coverage• Collaboration with other arts organizations, community organizations or orchestras.

SWOT analysis: threats

Cluttered environment• Breaking through the noise; with so many different niche markets and different media, it is hard to break through the clutter and determine the most effective channels;

Ever changing landscape• Key rivals introduce innovative new products;• Changes in technology and markets.

Demographic structure• Difference in demographic makeup between orchestra audience and new media users limits demand.

SWOT analysis: what’s next?

Use company strengths and capabilities as cornerstones for strategyUse available materials and media, engaged audience and established sites

Pursue those market opportunities best suited to company strengths and capabilitiesMaintain strong relationships with patrons, extend the life of a performance and open the door to other geographic markets

Correct weaknesses and deficiencies that impair pursuit of important market opportunities or heighten vulnerability to external threatsSet a budget for new media, hire or train staff, review contracts and copyrights and keep track of changes in technology and markets (and don’t put your eggs in one basket)

Thompson, Arthur, John Gamble and A.J. Strickland. Strategy: Core Concepts, Analytical Tools, Readings

Measuring results:Return on Investment

“In social media and the blogosphere, being able to measure, track and compare the results is a requirement for determining next steps and strategy.”

First, an organization needs to find out what it is trying to accomplish. Are you spreading a message, building a community, raising awareness, forging relationships? From there, find out what to measure.

Earlier, we established some key elements of social media: community, conversation, participation and connectedness. And of course content; content drives the community. Now, how can we translate these concepts into measurable attributes?

Measuring results

Dow Jones. Tracking the Influence of Conversations.

InterestWhat and how much is the interest in

your organization

AttitudeWhat attitudes do people hold about

your organization

ActionWhat actions, that matter from a

business perspective, do people take

as a result of your campaign

Measuring results: triad of measurement

Kami Huyse. The Triad of Measurement.

Activity (how many people did you reach)

Page views

Unique site visitors

And many more metrics

Community(who is your community)

Demographics

(age, location, income etc.);

Psychographics

(lifestyle, behavior, values etc.)

Measuring results: interest

ActivityUnique page views over 2-month period (May 1-July 1)


CSO Fans on Facebook• Over 50% of our fans are younger than 24 • Over 85% of the fans are younger than 34

CommunityFacebook fan demographics


Conversation(what is the community talking about)

Conversation Index (ratio between blog posts and comments-plus-trackbacks);

Influential Ideas (memes; how long does a message remain in the arena of

public opinion and interaction)

Connectedness(what is your relationship with the community)

Relationships and Connections (influence within a specific community)

Content(what is the focus of the community or conversation)

Relevance (how relevant to my company

is a particular blog post);

Tone (what is the sentiment associated

with the response, positive, negative or neutral)

Measuring results: attitudes

Conversationblog postings on “Chicago Symphony” from April 11-July 9



Conversation and Content

Keeping track of the conversation on del.icio.us., where you can learn about tone and relevance of specific conversations, blog posts and Web pages.

Here you see conversations about San Francisco Symphony’s “Blogger Night”

Participation(what is the community doing; what are its actions)

Engagement (the recipient responds to a message; a comment or feedback; initiating a conversation)

Sales (ticket or product sales as a direct response)

Community Activation (sharing and recommending products or events; word of mouth)

Measuring results: action


Engagement

Posts on discussion boards, your Facebook “wall”


Sales and community activation

You can measure user action in various ways on Facebook. To the left, action can be both sharing the event invitation (community activation) and confirming attendance (sales)

Wrapping up

Back to The Cluetrain Manifesto: thesis number 57 pleads the case that “smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.” Seeing the decline in traditional arts coverage, the inevitable, it seems, is an increase in participation and conversations with your community.

But I leave it to each individual organization to create its own set of lists, draw its own conclusions and determine its own course of action. This brief and incomplete analysis merely serves as a guide and as a provoker of thought on orchestras and new media.



By Marc van Bree

This presentation was produced from the series “Orchestras and New Media” on my blog Dutch Perspective. Many sources have contributed to this series and presentation. If I have inadvertently left any attribution out, please do let me know.

For any question, comments or feedback, please feel free to contact me at any time:

dutchperspective (at) mcmvanbree.commcmvanbree.com/dutchperspective


Special thanks to

National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University “Reporting the Arts II”Newspaper Association of America The Cluetrain ManifestoIcrossing’s What is Social Media?Justin Davidson’s Whither Withering Criticism on Musical AmericaDrew McManus’s How to Connect With New Media on AdaptistrationWeng Wah Wong’s Social Media and Marketing: Evolution or Revolution on SlideshareBrian Reich and Dan Solomon’s Media Rules!Nina Simon on Museum 2.0Beth Kanter on Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social MediaKami Huyse on Communication OvertonesDow Jones’s Tracking the Influence of Conversations.Thompson, Arthur, John Gamble and A.J. Strickland Strategy: Core Concepts, Analytical Tools, Readings

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Orchestras and New Media