Musical Money-Pits

The economic health of America’s symphony orchestras:

The latest report, commissioned by the Mellon Foundation and written by Stanford economics professor Robert J. Flanagan,
makes it clear that running a symphony orchestra requires a high
tolerance for paradox and fiscal frustration. You could raise ticket
revenue by adding concerts, but that only means more empty seats. You
could try to fill the seats by doing more marketing, but Flanagan shows
that once you’ve covered the basics, new advertising initiatives are
often not worth the investment. Neither are gala benefits, in many
cases: the largest orchestras would actually save money by fundraising
less. Vanishing subscribers are being replaced by single-ticket buyers,
who are by definition harder to please, more expensive to reach, and
less likely to return. It’s also costing organizations more to earn
less, because they have to keep paying those pipers. The one segment of
the classical music world whose fortunes are improving is orchestra
musicians whose income has “increased more rapidly than the pay of most
other groups of workers.”

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