No abstract

There is increasing interest in the academic community to better understand how concert audiences experience and value live classical music (Kolb 2000; Pitts 2005; Pitts et al. 2013; Radbourne, Glow & Johanson 2013). Numerous authors have recognised the social value of concert attendance, especially important for infrequent and young attendees (Brown 2002; ACE 2004), however it is often assumed that frequent attendees are motivated by purely aesthetic reasons. Similarly, it has been acknowledged that a listener’s experience of a concert is impacted by the presence of other audience members (Pitts 2005), yet there has been little research on the nature of the ‘community’ formed by a concert audience. In this paper, we wish to share our initial findings from our two collaborative doctoral awards in partnership with a regional chamber music promoter and a regional symphony orchestra. Through questionnaires, focus groups and interviews with audience members, we have sought to add additional understanding of concert attendance as a form of socialising, the short-term communal aspects of being ‘in-audience’, and the longer-term communities that surround cultural institutions, which can be seen to be displaying fan-like qualities. We aim to demonstrate that aesthetic pleasure is never the only motivating factor behind concert attendance, even for frequent attendees, as their selection of concerts and their listening experiences are always influenced by social interactions.

Arts managers frequently use customer relationship management systems to identify early and late ticket bookers, but to date there has been no comparable investigation of spontaneity and planning through qualitative academic audience research. This paper combines two radically different datasets to draw new insights into booking patterns of audiences for contemporary arts events. Quantitative data from Audience Finder has been analysed to look for trends in early and late booking amongst audiences for contemporary art forms. Qualitative data has been drawn from the Understanding Audiences for the Contemporary Arts study, which used in-depth individual interviews to investigate the contemporary arts attendance of audience members in four UK cities. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was then used to draw out insights about where the purchasing point sits within the longer decision to attend. Following a review of marketing and audience research literature on the decision to attend, we present the findings from each of these analyses, looking at moments where they confirm, supplement, contradict, or say something completely outside the remit of the other dataset. We show how the timescale of the decision to attend is influenced by (1) art form conventions and price, (2) geographical region and availability of the arts, (3) attending arts events with companions, and (4) personal preference for planning or spontaneously choosing activities. We end by suggesting a new three-part model for understanding booking patterns, and considering how these insights might be acted upon by arts organisations.

No abstract

Since the establishment of a classical music canon in the 19th century, classical music culture has historically been focused on a stable set of masterpieces by genius composers predominantly from the classical and romantic periods. A small number of composers continue to dominate programming to this day. Many classical music organisations are keen to programme music beyond this narrow repertoire and to showcase new or unfamiliar works. The need to sell tickets, however, is often an obstacle, with organisations far more confident in the ability of big hits to attract large crowds. This article explores the experiences and opinions of classical music concertgoers in relation to familiar and unfamiliar music, providing a number of reasons as to why audiences may choose to hear well-known pieces rather than new works. This paper reports on one strand of a qualitative study with 42 individuals who booked tickets for one of two concert series consisting of core and populist repertoire, respectively. Semi-structured interviews were carried out to explore the reasons for their choices and their experiences of attending live concerts. These interviews showed that most participants did indeed have a clear preference for hearing music that was familiar to them, and only frequent attenders relished the challenge of unknown music. Participants felt that listening to familiar music was usually a more enjoyable experience than hearing something new. They rarely spoke of becoming bored with over-familiar music, perhaps because the live concert experience brings a sense of freshness to even the most familiar work.