Classical music and marketing

On a broader scale, art is a highly diverse range of human activities engaged in creating visual,
auditory, or performed artifacts, artworks that express the author’s imaginative or technical skill
and are intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power. The fact that art has
become a part of the culture industry is a product of liberal industrial countries. T.W.Adorno
stated that culture has become a concept that covers many elements, its standardization, and its
dissemination has created the concept of culture management so that the elements such as
advertising and brand become together with art management. In postmodern times, cultural
elements have also become products subjected to marketing activities.

Art marketing is a concept that emerged with the expansion of the product’s definition by Kotler
(2016). The rise of the wealth and scale of the middle class in the nineteenth century affected the
art market and artists. The increase in the capitalist class, the transformation of Paris into the
cultural capital, the opening of the education, and the market to international students (students
and dealers) concur with this period. The period in which the art market was centered in Paris
was also a period in which the art market was internationalized where the production and the
standards increased (White and White, 1966).

When the literature on art marketing was examined, it was seen that art marketing is discussed in
different aspects such as visual arts, museums, cinema, and music. P.Bourdieu defined three
forms of cultural capital and discussed the concepts such as painting, music, and sculpture under
the title of “etat objective;” he also stated that consumption of these elements is limited to a
certain class.

This essay covers music marketing essentially the relationship between classical music products
and marketing, music as a product, market conditions, effective marketing approaches, and
strategies in the modern era.
 The music industry consists of the independent artists
and companies that earn money by organizing live
concerts and shows, audio and video recordings, by
creating new songs and pieces, compositions and sheet
music, and the associations and organizations that
support and represent music creators. Many music
genres exist in the world, such as jazz music, classical
music, rock music, and pop music, etc., but this study
goes more deeply into classical music. Classical music
provides intellectual and aesthetic education to people
and is the core factor for having a positive impact on a
person’s brain and mental wellbeing, and has the
advantage of having a good effect on the human’s
personality and behavior. So how does this music reach
the people? The answer is music marketing. As the
marketing profession has transformed with the move
from a product orientation to a customer-centric orientation, so has music marketing.

Over the last few years, more and more people are seeking to enhance their classical music
education and sense, even though there is still a big gap between artists and audiences and lower
market share for classical music.

In the classical music industry, we face many problems belonging to marketing, economics, and
management. For example, in my country below questions are becoming a problem in this
industry:
 How to increase the target market for classical music? 
 How to make art marketing efficiently to expand the target market? 
 An art career without marketing is just a pleasant hobby therefore, how to make an
advanced marketing strategy to sell the musical works. 
 From which point to have the marketing for classical music to expand the outreach and
be close to the audience. Need to find out and have a solution for what is lacking, where
 is our weakness in marketing and what kind of marketing methodologies we need to
apply.
Thorough study for legal and policy environment and documentation, as well as an education
system, prepare future audiences for classical music is demanded better results. 

Of course, to solve these mentioned problems we connect with marketing, management, and
economic sectors. How to make an accurate marketing strategy, how to manage them, and
financial issues such as how much would it be ticket prices, advertising fees, and hall rental, etc. 
My first experience of attending the classical music concert in Hungary has impressed me with
how they have built these good relationships between performances and the audience’s
attendance. To compare with Hungary in my country, well-qualified performances are increasing
nowadays, in the real market there are insufficient audiences though.

The wider relationship between music and marketing has been extensively researched by
academics and professionals across a range of disciplines, including economics, music,
sociology, and psychology. The literature in these fields has certainly informed the work of
marketing scholars, whose focus has largely been in two main areas - music in marketing and the
marketing of music.

Marketing is one of the biggest-mind-changing subjects by engaging people through attractive

campaigns, media, and so on. Therefore, marketing would be the creative way to distribute
meaning and benefits of classical music such as to help people understand why classical music is
important for them, what kind of benefits it has, and to support their interest and hobby. Classical
music performing organization should create full market awareness of their programs and
activities, utilize educational programs and community concerts to connect with their market,
induce attendance for a potential audience through free tickets or heavily discounted ones,
encouraging people to attend future concerts, and promote group attendance with the idea of
treating a friend, spouse, or family to a concert. If finances allow, classical music performing
organizations need to have bolder advertisements in the media, whether in newspapers,
magazines, or new technologies.
A more efficient and proper marketing approach is content marketing in classical music
marketing. By definition, content marketing is a type of marketing that involves the creation and
sharing of online material such as blogs, videos, infographics, photos, gifs, etc., that does not
explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services. There
are so many stimulating, scandalous, and dramatic stories about the composers we perform, so
many historically documented doomed premieres for works that went on to be today’s
warhorses, and so many fascinating connections among people and places, living and deceased,
performers and creators. People now crave more information than traditional marketing
messages. By showing stories, rehearsal, just one vital message of the performances, and
educational parts to create contents, the organizations can be able to attract their audiences
interestingly. For example, the California symphony produced a lot of content around the detail
in Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony that the percussion ‘the cymbal’ only has one note in the entire
symphony. They did a video and a social media graphic about this weird phenomenon. You
don’t have to read music to look at a side-by-side comparison of the violin part versus the
cymbal part and see that it’s quite different. This type of content got people interested.

Classical music performing organizations should work towards establishing a brand name and a
favorable image in the minds of its local community. This will enhance its viability, develop its
audience, win audience members as promoters in their community, and attract sponsors and
donors. A fresh approach to branding can help classical music get rid of its elitist image, attract
younger people, and interest potential audience members to learn more about the art form and
attend concerts.

In this century, we understand the importance of marketing in our everyday life either at a
priority level in the art and music industries. Scholars in these industries focus more on how to
use marketing efficiently in the art and music industries, how to sell the products, and how to
communicate with audiences. Other foreign scholars, especially USA researchers just do not
focus on jazz music, classical music, or rock music, as I mentioned earlier they deal with a
broader way such as evaluation and development of art marketing and audience research for the
performing arts, etc. Reversely, my research work would be more focused on classical music,
which is a branch of the music industry to give knowledge and great importance of classical
music, to figure out the problems faced in between the classical music performing institutions,
artists, and the market in Mongolia. The highlights of the research are to improve marketing
methods in classical music, expand the market in this area, and show qualified classical musical
performance to the public. Because of assuming music especially in classical music is as I am a
classical music musician, I know the many important good advantages of classical music, also
there were not enough audiences in this until now in Mongolia. Lately, audiences are trying to
know why people should listen to classical music and why they should attend live concerts. As
increasingly good qualified performers, concerts and programs we faced how to match with
audiences. 

For classical music consumers, the concerts have always tended to attract a more mature
audience. This is partly due to the lifestyle of the individual audience members. Younger
audiences are indeed attending, but not as often as older audiences. Although data show that a
higher percentage of older concert-goers subscribe to orchestra concerts, the percentage of
younger concert-goers buying single tickets is higher than the percentage of older ones doing so.
Younger audiences do support classical music performing organizations, but just not as much as
the older crowd.

Classical music lovers are everywhere, but most of them are not in the local concert halls.
Roughly 10% to 15% of American adults have what might be termed a close or moderately close
relationship with classical music, and again as many have weaker ties to the art form. The
problem is that only half of those who express the very highest levels of preferences for classical
music attend symphony orchestra concerts (Brown and Bare, 2003). Younger people and
potential audiences, in general, are more interested in contemporary music. More potential
audience members than current single ticket buyers and subscribers stated they would attend the
symphony more if additional contemporary works were featured. Reversely, the younger
generation attends concerts when it is modern, not boring and the program is interesting. This
may show that programming more new works may help bring in these prospective concert-goers.
The important part of classical music marketing is the concert concept, precisely the program of
the performance. If the program is traditional and old the younger people attendees are less, and
if it is more contemporary the middle and older people attendees are less. To balance between
them marketing managers should focus on concert programs, differentiate and figure out
accurate advertisement methods to the target markets. Females have a slightly higher probability
of attending classical music concerts than males and also reported a higher frequency of
attending classical music concerts. Females tend to have a higher rate of support for cultural
organizations, and more than males, show their support by attending the programs of performing
art organizations. Females adhere more strongly than males to the belief that cultural
organizations are an integral part of the community.

In this essay, we see how classical music is important, it still exists alive in every time and every
century. By improving marketing in classical music as being a bridge of classical music and
market which is an important branch of arts, it has a positive impact on human's education and
health, as well as contributes greatly to their upbringing and it will be able to increase qualified
classical works and build a positive and delightful long-term relationship between them. Also, in
my future research works can provide motivating marketing guidance to all classical music
performing organizations and artists facing the same problem as Mongolia. 

Date: 2020 / November / 30

Name: Zoljargal Ulziibadrakh

Institute: Faculty of Economics, University of Debrecen
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