Economics, Marketing and Performances of US Classical Music: Journeyin’ Together to de Promise Land

Since the beginning of the latest financial and real crisis in 2008, US symphony orchestras and opera houses have revealed adaptation to the turmoil of scarce resources and a very keen competition (Jeannotte and Duxbury J Arts Manag Law Soc 45(2):84–99, 2015; Turbide et al. Int J Arts Manag 10(2):4–13, 2008). Adaptation has had multiple implications: implementation of websites and social media as innovative tools for audience exploration and development (Pierotti et al. Eur Sci J 10(34):1–22, 2014; Ravanas Int J Arts Manag 10(2):68–78, 2008); revenue diversification and performance measurement (Hong J Arts Manag Law Soc 44(3):181–201, 2014; Besana J Arts Manag Law Soc 42(2):79–89, 2012); community engagement together with testing of new segments like tourists (Kemp and Poole J Arts Manag Law Soc 46(2):53–62, 2016. Guachalla Eur J Tour Res 6(1):83–87, 2012; Woosnam et al. J Hosp Mark Manag 18:500–511, 2009; Poon and Lai Urban Stud 45(11): 2273–2289, 2008). Marketing, and especially social media marketing, has had a crucial new role and enhanced “interactive online world in which participants with different interests, resources and power co-create value” (Kornum and Mülbacher J Bus Res. 66(9):1460–1464, 2013). Marketing and fundraising have extracted both willingness to pay and willingness to donate from audiences, while audiences have been spending more time than ever using social media, and the US classical music has been striving to use social media and to reach, engage, catch and hold the millions of consumers who use it daily, tourists included (Parsons A (2011) Social media from a corporate perspective: a content analysis of official Facebook pages. Allied Academies International Conference: proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Studies. 16(2):11–15). Marketing has called for e-commerce of audiences; fundraising has called for s-commerce of philanthropists. After analysing the new marketing scenario and pointing out social media marketing strategies of the US classical music, this paper investigates 100 symphony orchestras and 100 opera houses according to their revenues, expenses and gains (or losses) in 2015. Thanks to cluster analysis, three groups will emerge with different performances and prevailing fundraising.