S1/E8: Dismantling the Ivory Tower

LABNOTES is a production of SECTORLAB and is designed to help people at cultural organizations to challenge conventional thinking by presenting ideas from inside and outside our sector. These ideas are also put to use in consulting.

If you want more insights like this one, sign up here.

Season 1 / Edition 8

---

CASE STUDY

“I am nervous about the old artforms in the digital future… they [may] survive and thrive – or they may disappear. We can sit down and wait, or we can try something. I am very much of the latter mindset”

That’s what Kim Bohr, CEO of Copenhagen’s DR Koncerthuset, told me when I chatted with him to understand how the Danish National Symphony Orchestra became the most viewed orchestra in the world on YouTube.

“Six years ago, we decided that you can’t make a concert without thinking of the digital world.” Bohr says. They decided to utilize YouTube as a streaming platform aimed at a global audience – “like Spotify with pictures or a Netflix for concerts”. And that’s had real-world effects: he says that now up to 20% of their audience flies in from outside Denmark for their concerts.

Their channel’s 438 million views – driven in large part by their highly-produced presentations of music from films and gaming – has made symphonic music (and their ensemble) relevant to a far younger, far larger, and much more diverse audience.

Are they diluting their brand and artistic “legitimacy” through these highly popular film/gaming presentations? “Why would we not do things that are popular?” Kim asks. “We’ve had 400M views around the world – we would never reach this audience otherwise. Why not give them that chance?”

He points out that DNSO does a 24 week classical season for its traditional audience (these concerts are also featured on the channel – notably, their performance of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez has 3.3M views), but: “I’ve given up on trying to cross them over to symphonic music… that would be like directing them to the “right” music – and that’s not correct. I’m interested in giving them the chance to love the orchestral sound. Some do cross over – but we let that happen.”

Email subscribers will get more from my research on this and other sectors soon. Sign up here to ensure you don't miss the next edition.

OBSERVATIONS

• When we debate the “artistic value” of things like film music, immersive Van Gogh, video games, Meow Wolf, etc., we ignore entry points into our artforms and opportunities to be relevant – often, for the younger, more diverse audiences we’re all ceaselessly clamoring for. “Engagement” is a two-way street.
  

• Relevant quote from Entrepreneur/VC Matthew Ball: "...too many companies define themselves through their products rather than the need(s) they fulfill ... this mindset exposes [them] to displacement and disruption... [like] the major railway companies of the early 20th century, which missed out on buses, cars, and trucking due to their focus on trains, not transportation." Are we allowing our organizations to be pigeonholed unnecessarily by a historical commitment to form or genre?
  

• I’ve written before on DR Koncerthuset’s product lines, and this seems like another great example of a “productized” deployment of institutional resources.
  

• The difference between this and a traditional Orchestra “pops” series is, I think, how seriously it’s taken – it’s not a “separate but equal” pops orchestra; it’s a self-produced presentation, not rented; there’s creativity and relevance in programming (often connected to the larger culture); set & lighting design are at a high level; there’s a consistency to genre (pops series always seem very “variety show” to me), and – by golly – everyone looks like they’re having fun.
  

• Notable: their “biggest hits” are NOT Marvel or Star Wars-related, but Ennio Morricone’s music for Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns.
  

• Worth noting that YouTube is the world’s largest streaming platform for music, and has ambitions to be the #1 player in the music industry for revenue generation. HALIDONMUSIC, a channel which streams compilations of classical music with nothing but static visual “backdrops”, has currently 2 billion views and 4.19 million subscribers.  

TAKE ACTION

When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you:

• If you thought this was cool, contact me and I can share more info – and how this could be adapted in a practical way.  

• If you have an organization I should look into, please let me know.  

• If you want to see what kinds of strategies might be good for your organization, I offer a free evaluation.

[ contact me ]

[ consulting ]

Copyright (C) 2024 Sectorlab LLC. All rights reserved.