“Everyone Hates Ticketmaster – But No One Can Take It Down” (by Guest Blogger Sylvia Goncalves)

This article from Wired highlights the fact that Ticketmaster controls the ticket selling industry despite its antiquated system and high service fees. This is due to their established relationships with major venues and proprietary, reliable ticket platform, which sets them apart from their more innovative competitors. However, future success in this industry is contingent upon whether the small ticket sellers can advance technologically to compete with Ticketmaster, and whether Ticketmaster opts to reduce service charges and make changes to its model adapting to the popularity of social media.

Currently, newer ticket sellers such as Veritix and Topspin Media have creative business models that also take into account the needs of the artist and the fans, rather than just the venue. Veritix’s innovative Flash Seats allows the company to conduct valuable market research for future ticket sales, while Topspin is geared towards assisting independent artists promote themselves and sell tickets. Creating reliable technology that can withstand large volumes of ticket sales at one time is the crucial issue for these upstart ticket sellers, that once conquered, will establish them as major contenders against the behemoth Ticketmaster.

If Ticketmaster elects to create new, innovative ways to engage ticket buyers and reduce their fees, without jeopardizing their current technological platform they will continue to dominate. However, the company will most likely not be spurred to make any changes until they feel that other ticket sellers are a threat. The threat will become apparent once another vendor creates sturdy, reliable technology, and with constant technological advances this may not be too far in the future.

From Elizabeth Edelson’s online Introduction to Arts Management class:  11/15/10 post by Sylvia Goncalves, LSCE student (CAM1100 Fa10).

Opera Flash Mob in Philly (by Guest Blogger Elizabeth Edelson)

Check out this great flash mob performance by the Opera Company of Philadelphia at Reading Terminal Market, a popular tourist destination in Philly. A terrific and totally fun example of arts organizations using social media tools to reach out to new audiences.

Elizabeth Edelson (B.A., Vassar College; M.A., Teachers College, Columbia University) is a Lecturer in Arts Management for the Purchase College School of the Arts and the School of Liberal Studies & Continuing Education.

A Case for Donor Walls (by Guest Blogger Elizabeth Edelson)

In Fundraising and Development in the Arts CAM3100, we discuss a variety of ways that arts organizations can “recognize” their major donors (e.g. thank them, publicly). You are all probably familiar with one of them: the donor wall. Typically sited prominently in the main entrance or lobby of a museum or theater, the wall lists donors by name and usually in tiers that indicate the size/hierarchy of gifts. It’s a way of showing appreciation for your staunchest supporters in your most public location. This recent blog post by Colleen Dilenschneider makes an interesting case for another important function of the donor wall: “slowly converting visitors into donors, over time.” -EE

Elizabeth Edelson (B.A., Vassar College; M.A., Teachers College, Columbia University) is a Lecturer in Arts Management for the Purchase College School of the Arts and the School of Liberal Studies & Continuing Education.

Winter/Spring 2011 at Purchase College Continuing Education

Our Winter/Spring 2011 catalog is now available online.  Click here to see our latest course offerings.

Purchase College Continuing Education: Facebook CEO Makes Major Gift

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on “Oprah” a $100 million gift to improve public education in Newark, NJ.  The money will be used to start a new foundation called Startup: Education.

Zuckerberg, now 26, created Facebook when he was in college.

Purchase College (Continuing Education) Professional Certificates

Arts Management Internship at BET (Purchase College Continuing Education, Arts Management Certificate)

 

 

 

BET Lyric Café

 

It feels as though it was just yesterday when I was interning with BET (Black Entertainment Television) running around doing various tasks for the production of BET J Lyric Café. I have no experience whatsoever with this type of thing besides the classes I had taken at Suny Purchase College and I had just declared my major last year in Arts Management. Am I really ready? Do I know what I’m doing? How prepared am I to deal with real people who have been in the industry for years when I‘m just now venturing into this field anxiously trying to get my feet wet? I guess you could say butterflies was just one of my concerns for although I was an intern in the Marketing department, today I was working with Special Events, unfamiliar with staff, unsure about assignments, and unclear if I had made the right choice pursuing such business filled with uncertainty and built upon that of chance. The truth of the matter is I had only taken a couple of classes but, those classes is how I managed to make it throughout the day. In those few classes I had learned how to apply business techniques to function in such a competitive environment, communicate effectively and efficiently in demanding situations as well as collaborate and work with my department as well as other departments towards a target goal. This insured that the whole was greater than the sum of any individual parts guaranteeing synergy. As a result of my experience I developed a positive outlook towards careers in Arts Management. It’s stressful, it’s time consuming, it’s difficult, it’s challenging, it’s demanding, it’s exasperating, it‘s tense, it‘s a headache. Arts Management is a lot of things but, it’s also something I love and in some weird crazy way that ensures that it’s all worthwhile.

　

– Angelica Gregory

Arts Management: Helping to Raise Your Personal Stock during an Economic Crisis (Purchase College Arts Management Certificate)

 

 

The Recession.

 

It’s what everyone’s talking about, what everyone’s thinking about and what everyone’s worried about. You can’t turn on the TV or walk past a newsstand without seeing something about our country’s seemingly hopeless economic situation.

 

So…what can you do? Sure, you can continue to play the lotto and hide under your bed until “this is all over”. Or, you can use this as an opportunity to increase your Human Capital.

 

That’s right- YOU have capital.

 

Now is the time to invest in something secure: YOURSELF. The Arts Management program at SUNY Purchase has allowed me to increase my Human Capital exponentially. Classes such as Viral Marketing, Contracts, Copyrights and Publishing, Fundraising and Development in the Arts and Touring, Promotion and Merchandising have given me invaluable skills that employers are in desperate need of.

 

In fact, just the other day… (Cue the cheesy flash back music)…

 

It seemed like any other day at the snowboard shop, when out of the blue I received a visit from the owner of the store. Now, in the 14 months that I’ve worked there, I can count on one hand that amount of times the owner has said more than “Hey, how’re you?” to me. He’s a very busy man and as long as I continue to show up on time and do my job, we’ve got very little to talk about.

 

But today was different… He was very eager to talk to me.

 

“Bill [my manager at the shop] said you’ve taken a Viral Marketing class. So, you understand all this Facebook and twitter nonsense?” he asked.

 

Shocked by his sudden interest I said, “Yeah… Are you looking for some help?”

 

We talked for a good hour or so about different ways to help the snowboard shop have more of an online presence and reach out to different demographics using social networking sites. It was quickly decided that I would in charge of updating the shop’s current marketing strategy and creating/managing social networking sites for the store.

He seemed relieved to have someone to help him navigate and translate all of the “online bullsh*t”. And I was relieved to have found a little job security.

-  EmmaLou DeGroat

I Have a Painter Living in My Basement (Purchase College Arts Management Certificate)

I have a 26 year old visual artist painter who lives in my basement. His name is Michael Kulick and he’s my cousin on my mother’s side. I grew up around his artwork my whole life and my house on Long Island has become a gallery for his artwork. Recently this past October, Mike was given the chance to showcase some of his paintings at a bar on Orchard Street in the village called the Skinny. The theme was Halloween horror and for two months prior to the show my cousin spent his time off from working night shifts at a Stop N’ Shop painting 5ft by 4ft, some even 6ft, canvases of black and white portraits of traditional and new horror figures.

I’ve been helping my cousin out with his rise to becoming the “new thing” in the art world for quite some time now. I’ve written some blogs and online interviews on him for online magazines, I help to keep his paint supply at a healthy amount and I critique his work with what knowledge I have of art history and what’s going on now in the art world. But Mike was really excited for this show and I knew that I needed to contribute more for him considering I’m the closest thing he has to an “agent.” A week before the show Mike and I rented a van large enough to fit his colossal canvases and spent an entire day hanging up the paintings on the red walls of the Skinny. Working together to see where each painting looked best on what wall, I helped Mike set up one of his most productive showcases yet. As soon as I got back to school I printed out about 30 copies of the flyer he created for his show. I covered almost every bulletin board around campus with fliers for Michael Kulick’s Horror Show, scheduled on the day before Halloween. I sent out invitations for the show on facebook to most of my friends and especially students in the SUNY Purchase network.

The night of the show ended up being a party night for my cousin and a couple of his coworkers including two friends who I brought from home. With black lights and Halloween vibes, everyone was admiring the huge black and white paintings of Dracula, King Kong, Michael Myers and others. There was also a 12ft long painting of Alien from the Alien movie. Mike ended up selling most of the paintings and also received commissions to do two more paintings. He ended up making close to $3000 on this one show and I am so glad I got to be a part of it. Without my help he would have been very discouraged in regards to how the show was set up, how many people would come and if anyone was actually interested in his work. Because I sent out all those invitations on facebook, many students from Purchase added Mike’s fan page to their pages. He went from 25 fans of his artwork to almost 300.

Part of the reason I’m an Arts Management major is because I want to someday be an agent for my cousin because besides him, I’m the only one who knows his art so well. I helped him over the summer as well with setting up shows. We drove up to Kingston, NY to hang up close to 30 pieces of artwork in this one art gallery. We even brought 12 of his paintings to Spike Lee’s studio in Brooklyn because they were being used in Spike Lee’s documentary on rapper Jay-Z. Though the Spike Lee gig seemed like a great break through, it didn’t turn out in a way that was helpful to Mike. But this last show that I had a lot of involvement in was a great success for him and while it puts a big smile on his face, it puts one on mine as well.

- Jessica Cervenka

A Summer With New York City Opera (Purchase College Arts Management Certificate)

I spent the summer of 2009 interning at New York City Opera (NYCO), and it is definitely one of my most memorable summer.  Coming from a family of musicians – mother a pianist, father an opera director and academia, and myself an assistant orchestra manager and tuba player – it was a thrill to be given the opportunity of working in one of the most innovative, top-notch opera house of the country. Having no real experience in marketing, I was able to get the job as a Marketing Intern. In the twelve weeks that I spent interning there, I completed 12 jobs of various sizes. These jobs include hosting and helping at events, design works, as well as archive work.

The first 6 weeks of my internship, I spent building the public online archive of all the opera production NYCO did since when they opened in 1944. This project has been going since a year and a half ago, and I as fortunate to have the honor of finishing it on my term. Like many other arts organizations such as Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic (both are NYCO’s neighboring competitors at Lincoln Center Plaza), the history of the company is something of value. What differentiates NYCO’s online archive to the others is that NYCO’s archive is interactive. Springing from the social networking concept, NYCO’s archive has a blog/comment segment where users with a NYCO account may contribute to the archive by adding personal experiences, stories, and comments. This interactive element is a really cool concept that would add a personal touch to an archive that would otherwise be all data. The archive is planed to launch early spring of 2010.

The other jobs I’ve done for NYCO include design works and events. I redesigned the layout of their subscription brochure for online purposes. I helped modify pictures and cut outs for event advertisements. Also, I hosted a wine tasting event for volunteers, and helped with one of their biggest fundraising event – DIVAS Shop for Opera. I attended meetings and found out how these non-profit art organizations out source and collaborate with other online media and design company such as Ironworks and 2X4.

The summer has been a great introduction for me into the field of arts management. At the end of my internship, I had a chance to meet with the General Manager of NYCO, George Steel. I was hoping to get some insights on how to manage my career in arts management if I’d like to be a musician at the same time. He said, “In today’s education, people are taught that they can only be good and experts in one thing, which is not the case. Management is something that comes with experience. Do as much as you can and everything that you want to do, and if you are good at all of it, you won’t ever have to choose which career to be in.”

With these words of wisdom, I believe I’ve learned as much as I can in that summer. 

Putting Putting up NYCO Banner for event – DIVAS Shop for Opera

– Santino Lo