By Jamie Lin
Founder and Managing Director at Studio Legato
Upon opening The National Theater and Concert Hall monthly program guide, we notice that the Concert Hall and the Recital Hall are fully packed with performances every single day. Often there are even two different shows in a day on the weekends. Aside from the Concert and Recital Halls, there are many other venues such as the 1,122-seat Zhongzheng Auditorium at the Taipei Zhongshan Hall and smaller ones as the 70-seat Wenshui Arts and Cultural Center. Most venues serve a fully booked schedule of musical performances year-round. But, do we really have the audience to fill up these houses on a daily basis? Where are the music audiences coming from?
The fact is very few musicians or musical ensembles in Taiwan have enough audience bases that would fill the house by mere publicity efforts. Based on my experience, in the past five or six years, whether it is an ensemble, a solo, or a chamber music concert, the audiences are often families, friends, or pupils of the musicians. The ratio of ticket holders who are drawn to purchase by publicity efforts is very limited.
On occasions with same date/month tag illustrate the same
program in different locations.
The above diagram shows over 50% of the audiences for solo and chamber music recitals obtain their tickets directly from the performing companies. The performers of the recitals illustrated above are mainly based in Taipei and teach also in the metropolitan. Their box office performances in the southern cities represented big contrasts from those in their home city. The purchasing audience base become lower outside of their customary living boundaries and therefore, less friends, family and students lie within their reach for direct promotion. With the rare exception of those who have trained with the performers and moved on to other cities, little or next to none from the general public would purchase and come to performances with no personal relevance.
Another finding is box office performance for solo events are normally lower than chamber music. This would not be a surprise based on the principle of personal relevance. The reach of a solo musician may only be one-third of the audience reach to that of a trio. The more members in the performing company, the higher numbers in their personal networks combined, and therefore, easier to generate higher attendance and ticket sales.
If this is how it works for the smaller ensembles, is it any different at larger ensembles?
The same date tag shows the same program at different locations.
A larger ensemble is not too different in ticket selling tactics than smaller groups. Most non-professional ensembles, meaning musicians are not on a monthly payroll, employs a member-direct-sales system. It literally requests members of the ensemble to utilize their connections pushing for maximum ticket sales. Some ensembles assign high sales targets to their members, some lower. Musicians more than often hold teaching posts up and down the island, but mostly in the groups I work with, they are largely based in Taipei, and their “customers” are concentrated in this city. Once these ensembles tour outside of Taipei, they lose leverage to the system. And, sales drop drastically.
The only exception is family programs.
The same date tag shows the same production at different locations.
The chart shows that ticket sales generated from the performing groups and ticketing systems (ex. Artsticket) for family concerts are closer to even balance in Taipei; whereas outside of Taipei, system sales are higher than direct selling efforts from the groups and less drastically proportionated than non-family programs. This is especially distinct in the inquiry calls we receive in the office, most 99% of inquiries are about family programs and rarely do we get one for non-family shows. (One memorable inquiry that was not for a family show was from a hotel by request of a Japanese guest, and sure enough on the said evening, we saw a female patron fully clad in kimono at the show.) This situation shows that people who are not related to the performers will be more interested in purchasing family programs upon seeing or receiving publicity materials, but less interested for regular concerts.
The high density of music performances and blurred distinctions among them often leave the audiences lost when it comes to purchase decisions. Unless the program is uniquely themed, such as “Night with Joe Hisaishi” or that the performer creates a buzz much like celebrity emcee Janet Hsieh playing violin, and even so when the show involved spectacles such as cooking spaghetti on stage, otherwise attention-grabbing is a challenge in itself for music ensembles. At the end of the day, it comes down to whether they should buy tickets to show support for the performing friends and families on stage.
The ecology within the music-performing field is sorely incomplete in Taiwan. Lack of agent system, branding mindset and structural operations, too little useful information are provided for audiences to distinguish between concerts and performing groups. Many reasons contribute to low ticket sales outside of Taipei, yet the fact that performers are far disconnected to being able to contribute more on tour makes box office performance look even gloomier. In addition, classical music concerts are often a one-off show, even with a good word-of-mouth spread, the next performance does not come around until six months later. In an information overload world we live in today, six months seem a lifetime to general public, and you’d have to start from one, if not zero, to regain audiences. And so the cycle begins all over again.
The situations aforementioned are for references on the current challenges facing performing artists of non-pop music genre in Taiwan.
For the Chinese version of this Feature, please go to 音樂會的觀眾從哪兒來？
{in.notes #1 January, 2014} Online journal & download here: in.notes
