As 2021/2022 seasons come to an end, we reach a moment of realisation. Classical music audiences are vanishing… and they’re not coming back.
From talking to organisations and musicians across all levels of the industry, in person audiences are down around 30%. My own experience of attending concerts certainly echoes this, with one well established classical event I went to having around 50% attendance, with one of the performances only having 38 people in the audience! Andrew Mellor has also written similar experiences that he and others have had in Classical Music magazine.
This is also backed up by a recent study by WolfBrown and the League of American Orchestras that found the 26% of pre-covid concert attendees have said they’re not ready to resume live performances, and that we’re looking at 15%-20% long term non-returners. I imagine many non-returners won’t be taking the time to fill out surveys about something they’re not going to, so this figure is likely to be higher.
Surely this significant drop is due to the pandemic? Sadly, this is not true. That same WolfBrown study found that less than half of non-returners cite health concerns as a reason for not returning. What is most striking though is looking at how other industries are coping in 2022 after the pandemic. Average Premier League attendance was higher in the 2021/22 season that pre-pandemic season of 2018/2019, and Glastonbury 2022 had its highest ticket sales for 15 years.
Anyone who has travelled recently can testify that human behaviour is very much in a post-pandemic phase. Packed trains, buses, and planes, with no spacing and few masks… this is a very different world to 2020.
The reality is that the significant and industry wide drop in classical music attendance is not due to COVID. We are now seeing the consequences of decades of systemic resistance to change, a stagnant and unevolved product, and unoriginal and out of date marketing.
