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Post-Covid Touring Sees Cancellation Due To Inflation Infestation

December 13, 2022

by:

Joe Patti

Wired recently had an article about the challenges facing independent artists when it comes to touring. Many are facing a combination of higher costs, a flooded market, and limited resources. Companies with touring equipment and vehicles report having all their inventory on the road. Not only is it difficult to find more equipment to purchase/rent in order to deploy it for tours, there isn’t enough labor to go around. Everyone from skilled technicians to bus drivers have left the industry for other opportunities that don’t demand so much of them.

Gas is pricey, batteries and other vehicle parts are more expensive, and drivers are harder to find, with many of them having switched during the pandemic to package delivery, garbage pickup, or other trucking jobs with less interpersonal contact that don’t require them to leave their families for months at a time.

While prices for hotel rooms, food, transportation, and gear have gone up, the fees performers are paid have remained flat. It appears this is due to there being more artists out there wanting to tour making supply outstrip demand, but also due to uncertainty exhibited by ticket buyers.

“There’s way less advance sales than normal. And I’m hearing this from everyone across the board,” she says. “[Fans] don’t wanna buy a ticket and get sick and have to eat it. So people are doing week-of, day-of [ticket purchases], which is tough for the venue and tough for us, because we obviously want to see advance sales.”

Because many artists need to cover a lot of these costs upfront out of pocket, there have been an increase in cancellation of dates as touring appears increasingly problematic. The prospect of going through a refund process contributes to reticence of consumers to buy tickets too far in advance..

Audience Relations, State of the Arts

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Experiences Are The Gift They Want

December 12, 2022

by:

Joe Patti

So I serendipitously started on my drive to work this past Saturday evening at the exact time a Hidden Brain episode mentioned how research shows that recipients of gifts prefer experiential gifts more than material gifts. I thought I was coming in to the middle of a discussion only to realize after listening to the whole recording of the episode that I started my car at the moment 34:30 into the show that host Shankar Vedantam and Carnegie Mellon University researcher Jeff Galak started discussing the data.

This is the time of year a lot of arts and culture organizations encourage people to buy tickets or gift certificates and give experience as a gift so the topic aligns well with our interests. Galak says that all else being equal in terms of price, experiences tend to bring more joy to recipients than material objects. The problem he says, is that givers don’t appreciate this which creates a disconnect.

This comes up a number of times in the episode where people don’t apply the lessons they learn as recipients to their giving. I almost wonder if it is somewhat related to the perception that no one experiences problems like you do and are all happier. In this case, it is believing that others don’t enjoy the same type of gifts as you do. Perhaps, this is exacerbated by marketing and advertising that portrays people enjoying material things in order to sell those things.

Vedantam also posits that it might be related to the fact that the giver sees the visible expression of joy at receiving an object whereas the expression of joy at an experience is delayed until it happens at a later time.

Galak says that expect for his kids, he pretty much exclusively focuses on gifting experiences. He and his wife are of a similar mind on this and exchange gifts in this fashion. He says the best gift his parents can repeatedly give is coming into town and watching his kids while he and his wife get away.

Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, State of the Arts

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Donating At Check Out, Legit or Shady?

December 7, 2022

by:

Joe Patti

An interesting situation has arisen in connection with at check out donation solicitations. Credit to Isaac Butler who retweeted a link to a post about a man who brought suit against drugstore chain CVS claiming the check out solicitations were a reimbursement for a $10 million donation obligation CVS had made to the American Diabetes Association. In November, CVS asked for the case to be dismissed based on their claim that their agreement was only to make up the difference between what customers donated and $10 million.

Emma van Inwegen who linked to both articles in a Twitter thread helpfully added a link to a third article by the Tax Policy Center that answers the question about who gets the tax benefit when you donate at checkout.

According to author Renu Zaretsky there are a lot of Tiktok videos out there that spread incorrect information about the transaction. She says her children have forbidden her to post a video on the site refuting the misinformation. (my emphasis)

To start, keep in mind that there are two ways charities can benefit from point-of-sale donations. The first is where the store donates a share of its sales. That type of donation is deductible by the business but not by its customers. The second way is where customers add something to their bill at the register with the extra amount going to charity. Customers can claim those amounts donated as deductions on their individual income tax return, though almost nobody ever does.

She goes on to explain that when you donate at check out, the business receiving the funds on behalf of a charity is only acting as the collection agent and does not get any tax benefit.

Zaretsky says the problem with giving at check out is that most people won’t get credit for that, or any other donation they make, because they don’t itemize deductions on their taxes.

Even with a receipt, more than nine out of 10 taxpayers won’t deduct this—or any other– charitable donation from their federal taxable income. That’s because they do not itemize their deductions.

When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act effectively doubled the standard deduction, the number of households claiming itemized deductions fell from 46.2 million in 2017 to 16.7 million in 2018. Most of those still itemizing their deductions are higher-income households. Those making more than $3.3 million annually get more than one-third of the federal income tax benefits from charitable giving, and few of these households are likely to do much of their giving at the grocery checkout counter.

Fundraising

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Who Is The Seat Choice Process Serving?

December 6, 2022

by:

Joe Patti

Here is a fun little conversation for performing arts venues because there is a fair chance you have a different point of view as a venue operator than as a consumer.

I saw this tweet last week. Apparently the venue set-up their online ticket sales criteria to make sure there weren’t any orphan single seats left open. It hit a minor nerve with others replying they had the same issue at other venues.

I only want two tickets. A single empty seat is your problem @TicketmasterUK, not mine! pic.twitter.com/bFMwz7AmdT

— James Ashe (@james_c_ashe) November 30, 2022

I swear to you that a couple hours later, we got a call at my venue box office from a guy complaining about the opposite problem. A nearly sold out show only had single tickets left and he felt it was our responsibility to shuffle people around so he and his girlfriend could sit next to each other.

I wondered how many venues out there had their ticketing system set up so that people couldn’t leave orphan seats? What sort of feedback do you get from that?

Honestly, unless you have been really good about making sure all your rows have an even number of seats, it is almost guaranteed that there will be orphaned seats unless you have a party of odd numbers insert themselves into the row somewhere.

This approach tends to value revenue generation over customer service. Note that you are only asked to leave at least two empty seats together. So if you leave three empty seats, the next purchaser of two tickets may not be able to complete their purchase. Likewise, it may not prevent four different purchasers from leaving an empty space between their parties if there are still a good number of seats left in the row. I actually tested skipping a single seat on a Ticketmaster site and was able to do it, but wasn’t willing to get on multiple computers to try doing it in the same row a number of times.

I definitely understand the desire to maintain effective revenue generation. When we get close to selling out, I start to scrutinize what holds we might safely release for sale. When I go to performances at other venues and movie theaters where I can choose my seat, I actually scrutinize the map and pick seats with an eye to leaving even number of seats in the row because I am sympathetic to the need for optimum seat usage.

But I also don’t want to throw up barriers that disincentivizes patrons from choosing to attend a live performance. It is really the patron’s responsibility to work out how to make seating choices that are best for the venue?

What are other people’s thoughts?

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Marketing/PR

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