Wanted- Choirs that need larger audiences!!

Welcome to Spring, March is upon us, and the concert seasons will soon restart. Choirs will have put in a lot of hard work through the winter months to prepare feasts of musical delights ready for concert audiences .... but with so many demands on people's time, will those audiences come?

Is there anything more disheartening than singing to an empty church?

No, and yet, that is what many groups do and worse still, what many groups expect to do! , and even my choirs have had that experience. Sometimes, we find excuses, 'oh the weather is bad so no one came out', or conversely, 'the weather is too nice for people to be stuck in a church for a concert!!'

The more you tell the more you sell

An old sales maxim, but very true, I am very fortunate to have at Leeds Male Voice choir a publicity team that produces quality posters and print, the same as you would find for any business out there advertising its products, and isn't that of course what a concert is, a product, an afternoon or evening's entertainment - should we not put as much effort into attracting the audience as we do into preparing the music, News releases in Newspapers ( a lot can now be done online) - listings in concert guides, leafletting in the town where the concert will take place?

Who are your concertgoers?

Everyone knows that it is easier to keep an existing customer than to try to find a new one, so do we look after ( or even know) who attends our concerts, and do we make the whole experience an 'event' or do we walk on stage and sing at our ticket holders?

It always makes me think, when a new shopping centre or retail park is opened, within a very short time the carparks are full, so where did these people shop before, after all its always the same shops on these retail parks, and in the same analogy, new choirs appear regularly, some don’t exist very long and are rather like the second hand car dealers of days gone by! – are they all looking for the same audience? Well, yes and no, some aren’t even looking – assuming that they will just arrive!

Yet others however have perfected what their group stands for, have sorted out who they think their audiences might be and have gone out and spoken to them and captured them (and it has to be said to the detriment of others) – but you pays your money and takes your choice and the new choir has just as much chance as the established choir – in fact in many ways, more of a chance – publicity and thinking about concerts is fresher and not led by the ‘we always done it this way’ brigade and here is a more important thing - because all the effort is worthwhile, and spurred on by their success, the forward thinking choirs who attract audiences also attract members – recruitment becomes easier and with better audiences comes healthier finances which can lead to more music being bought and new works being commissioned, which can only be a good thing for the music community at large.

This is all food for thought, and it's all covered in the wide range of books that we have available on this subject, especially 'Seven steps to More Successful Concerts' but don't take my word for it, here are what some others say.

"Seven Steps to More Successful Concerts ” by Tim Knight is a fine follow up to his previous “The Survival of Your Choir”. With an estimated 20,000 choirs across the UK the market share of audience for each choir is diminishing. Tim Knight’s book shows how, by applying commercial & social media marketing techniques and strategic planning, it is possible not just to increase audience share and choir revenue, but also to encourage new repertoire and utilize diverse venues to help spread the reach of choral music as public entertainment and education. The great thing is that this is not a theoretical guide but is based on real life tried and tested practical experience."

Phillip Tolley, British Choirs on the Net (www.choirs.org.uk)

Oodles of great ideas, bucketfuls of common sense, loads of stuff every choir should already be doing - Happy reading!"

Manvinder Rattan

Here is a link to the book, but if you have a look at our current offers page, you will find special deals on all our books, and all incredibly useful and highly regarded

Happy Music making

Tim

TKM820 Seven Steps to More Successful Concerts

£7.95

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