Classical music audiences are vanishing… why aren’t we doing anything about it?

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the consequences of decades of systemic resistance to change, a stagnant and unevolved product, and unoriginal and out of date marketing.

So, what now? For a second, we’ll take the classical music out of this. Any business that faced a 30% drop in annual sales would be in crisis. The panic button would be hit, extraordinary meetings called, the board would be demanding change. For a business in this situation there are three options available if they didn’t want to fail.

Adapt how the product is marketed
Adapt the product
Both 1 and 2

Doing absolutely nothing and just repeating what has been done before isn’t an option for an organisation that wants to still exist. Can you imagine Apple suffering a 30% drop in sales and doing absolutely nothing? Or Nike? Or Manchester United? Or Amazon? Or Tesco? Or Disney? No! That would be insane, and we would think they are insane.

So, what are organisations doing in the classical music industry in the face of 30% drop in audiences? Nothing… and this is insane.

As I’ve already written about on this blog, orchestras not only are launching next year’s seasons in the same dull boring way as they always have, but they’re doing it the same as each other. As well as failing to capitalise on the incredible potential of digital and doubling down on outdated marketing strategies, at times they’re failing to even get the basics of social media right.

There is also little evidence that the “product” of classical music has changed. I recently wrote about how we should be offering value for time and not value for money to attract young audiences, but that concept and that idea of adding value to the concert experience as a whole is vital to audiences of any age. The “regular” concert experience has been largely untouched for over 100 years, and with audiences vanishing it’s obviously not working.

With the need for change screaming at us in the face, we should look at how other organisations have dealt with having to make radical changes in the face of ruin.

There are plenty of examples we could look at. Marvel comics went from financial crisis to global phenomenon by switching its focus from paper comics to cinema. One of the most famous examples of a company that has repeatedly tried to reinvent itself is Nintendo. Originally a playing card company, they had some failed experiments at switching products (including instant rice, “love hotels”, and a taxi service), before becoming a toy company in the 1960s, and then a video game company in the 1970s. But in this blog, we’ll be looking at a business that has had similar struggles to classical music industry and adapted both its product and how it was marketed… Formula 1.

In 2016, Formula 1 had a problem. The glamour of the last 70 years was wearing off and 2010 and 2015 Formula 1 global fan surveys had revealed significant dissatisfactions in the fan base. It was failing to attract younger audiences, the presentation of Formula 1 hadn’t changed in decades, it had failed to embrace digital, and despite several attempts Formula 1 had never managed to crack the American market. The number of people tuning in to watch fell from 600 million in 2008 to about 400 million in 2015 (a fall of about 30%... sound familiar?)

Despite being credited with the rise in popularity of Formula 1 in the 1970s, their CEO Bernie Ecclestone was now drastically out of touch with the modern world. In one interview he famously said:

“I’m not interested in tweeting, Facebook and whatever this nonsense is. I’d rather get to the 70-year-old guy who’s got plenty of cash. So, there’s no point trying to reach these kids because they won’t buy any of the products here and if marketers are aiming at this audience, then maybe they should advertise with Disney.”

You wouldn’t be surprised if this quote came from an orchestra in 2022.

It was clear Formula 1 was not in the 21st century. Fortunately, in late 2016 it was bought out by Liberty Media who made an instant change… they changed Formula 1 from a motorsports company to a media company.

Two years later, the cornerstone of this new approached launched. The Netflix series “Drive to Survive” was a whole new take on Formula 1 and an instant success, becoming one of the most watched shows on Netflix. Part docuseries, part operatic drama, it focuses on behind-the-scenes action and driver/team rivalries as much as on-track racing. In fact, only about 20% of Drive to Survive is actual racing. The presentation is totally different from what you have seen before for Formula 1 before, just have a quick look at the trailer for season 4.

The show has also allowed important current issues to be a part of the Formula 1 discussion. For example, the driver Lewis Hamilton’s stand on racial injustice, We Race As One to acknowledge the global fight against COVID, and the commitment to have a net-zero carbon footprint by 2030. In the modern world, values matter as much as the product, and F1 is embracing this.

Another big change was that all fans given equal importance and the chance to interact with the sport. There is a difference between a customer and a fan, and that is passion. Liberty Media understands that passion, especially in sports, ultimately drives sales.

Previously, drivers were not allowed to be on social media. Hamilton joked that Bernie sent him cease-and-desist letters whenever he posted clips on Instagram. Drivers were now encouraged to be on social media, where Hamilton now has 29.4 million Instagram followers. The entire sport is now focussed on this with teams flourishing online and race content focussed on engaging fans. Restrictive TV deals which were the cornerstone of Formula 1’s success in the 1970s were loosened so clips could be shared on social media. If you look back at the trailer for season 4, it opens with a montage of tweets from viewers, a statement of intent about social media’s place in the sport.

So, what was the result? Last year saw an estimated increase of 73 million fans globally, 77% of that growth was driven by the 16-35 demographic, and a 40% increase in viewership in the USA. Oh, and its valuation increased from $8 billion to $13 billion in just 3 years. From radically adapting both the product and how it was marketed, Formula 1 went from existential crisis and inevitable oblivion to a thriving success.

One of the reasons I choose to focus on Formula 1, rather than an example like Nintendo, is that in adapting its product it didn’t reinvent the wheel. Whereas what Nintendo does now is totally different to what it did in the 1950s, Formula 1 is still about fast cars going round a track lots of times. This is why it should serve as such inspiration for the classical music industry.

Classical music can stay at its core about classical music, it doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Performances should still have this right at the heart of what we do. But the “product” of what we do is so much more than the notes that come from an instrument. Like Formula 1 changing from being a motorsports company, all of us in classical music should change to be a “media and in-person entertainment company”.

The concert experience starts well before the first note is played, and this is where we need to start experimenting and adapting with what our in-person product is. Like Formula 1, we have not embraced digital and social media despite the central role it plays in society and the benefits of embracing it being so painfully obvious.

In February I gave a provocation at the Association of British Orchestras conference where I argued the case for immediate change. You can read it in full here, but this was my closing statement:

“So, at the start of 2022 we find ourselves at a fork in the road.

One path looks comfortable and familiar. We don’t have to challenge the way we think or operate, and we can go back to playing our finite game. It leads us back to where we were before the pandemic, going through the motions, hoping the world doesn’t change and that our audience will engage with us on our terms indefinitely.

Ultimately, this leads to us not keeping up with society and going the way of other organisations that have been too rigid to adapt to the world they operate in, like Blockbuster, like Skype, and like HMV.

The other path looks uncomfortable and unknown. It leads us through challenges, requiring us to reflect on ourselves and our previous ways of thinking, and begin to adopt an infinite mindset. It entails continual learning and development, embracing a culture of curiosity and change.

It also leads forwards, finding new opportunities, meeting our audience where they are in the world we live in, embracing digital, and developing the skills and ways of thinking to be able to constantly thrive in the future.

In short, the world has changed… and so must we”

6 months later and the case for change is greater than ever. We have more and more data saying that we’re in trouble and we know audiences are vanishing. In many ways, the crisis classical music facing is like the climate emergency. The evidence that we need to change has been there for years and is growing daily, crisis events happen to hit us in the face and remind us of the need for immediate change, and yet we refuse to take the action we need to guarantee our own survival.

With these blogs I try to have a constructive approach, giving examples from other industries about alternative approaches that can act as inspiration for change. It’s something I’m going to continue to do, but there comes point where we need to get out of the clouds and take action. We can’t wait for another programming cycle to do something, or to see how this season goes.

We need to act, and we need to act now.

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