PatronManager

Today’s guest blog post is written by Natalie Sullivan, Assistant Marketing Manager, Content and Social Media, Patron Technology.

I am a millennial and an avid patron of the arts. Not a week goes by where I don’t attend some sort of live performance. That said, there is one large subset of the performing arts world that I have found really hard to get into… classical music. Between the “stuffy” stigma and generally high (for me) ticket prices when I could go to a hip comedy show or off-Broadway musical for less than half the price, I have just not been enticed to go! The closest I have come to purchasing a ticket for a classical music concert since moving to New York four years ago has been paying for episodes of Mozart in the Jungle on Amazon.

But, this all might change because of a Wired article I stumbled upon this past weekend entitled, “Uber, But For Millennials Who Want Orchestras in Their Living Rooms.” The article focuses on a platform called Groupmuse, which connects classical musicians with local audiences to put on concert house parties. You can either sign up to host one of these events or type in your zip code and find someone who’s hosting a public event near you that still has spaces left. And the best part, it’s basically free. There are no fees to host or attend, all that the company asks is that you pass around a donation bucket for the musicians at the end of the concert (they suggests $10 per person).

The whole idea behind the platform is to expose a new kind of audience to classical music (on their terms) while giving the musicians, who are either professionals or conservatory students vetted by an internal team, performance opportunities. So this all sounds great, but how does it affect your organization? Well, according to the article:

…musicians aren’t the only ones benefiting. Groupmuse audiences offer a demographic different from the usual Lincoln Center crowd: 70 percent of “musers” were born in the 1980s and ’90s. That’s wildly attractive to organizations like the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where half the audience is over 65. “All orchestras are concerned that once the older audience goes, they’re gone for good,” says Katherine Johnson, director of communications at the New York Philharmonic. “Bringing 30-somethings and 20-somethings into the concert hall—they’re the future.” Starting this month, Groupmuse has begun offering discounted tickets in partnership with both outfits, as well as other classical music institutions.

Groupmuse could very well start to revolutionize the way millennials think about and experience classical music. It might just be the on-ramp for people like me to start purchasing tickets to live classical music events and dare I say, become future classical music subscribers!

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