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.”