Back in July we conducted our second New Music Audience Survey – to find out more about interactions with new music audiences, from ‘you’ the people creating and producing the work.
We wanted to know how things were going.
How you were engaging with audiences, both online and offline.
If audiences for your work had changed, grown and developed.
And what methods were working for you and what challenges you faced – if any.
We wanted to know this so that we can help, support and work with you better.
2015 to 2016
We run our first Audience Survey in 2015 and gathered lots of useful information, that we use to develop our work and to lobby on your behalf.
Ahead of the 2016 survey, I wrote a blog about why we were doing this again and what we hoped to achieve.
Read ‘We want to hear more about your audiences’ here >>
This year numbers for those who filled in the survey were a little lower than we hoped, with 32 individuals completing the form.
But as always the finding were very revealing and extremely useful.
The Results
Here are some of the key findings:
- The highest number of respondents were putting on events in London / South East
- The highest number of respondents are using Social Media to communicate with audiences and deemed this fairly successful, along with word of mouth
- A high number of respondents are using their own website or platform for promotion, but not feeling that this was a successful method of communication
- Using paid advertising as a method of communication from print, to online and Social Media deemed an unsuccessful method of communication and promotion
- Many respondents did not collect audience data
- Those who did collected audience data only collect two types of information
- Email and mailing lists deemed as the most effective method of data collection
- Many respondents still find it difficult to gain access to audience data via venues
- Respondents collect data for a number of reasons with ‘understanding audiences’ being the most prevalent
Challenges
- Perceptions and understanding of new music
- Money
- Marketing
Opportunities
- Collaboration
- Networking
- Support
What kind of support:
- Organisational backing
- Money / Funding
- Marketing
The majority of the respondents said audience have ‘significantly’ grown over the last twelve months.
Read the full results of our 2016 Audience Survey here >>
What’s next…
Firstly we would like to thank all of you who have filled in this survey so far, we are very grateful for your time.
To those who haven’t….do you agree with these results? Do they reflect your experience? Do you have something to add?
To ensure that we capture everyone’s voices and that these results reflect all those in the new music community, we have re-opened this survey!
Have your say here >>
Thanks to the information you have shared we are committed to doing to following next steps….
We are continuing to develop our data sharing agreements with all partners and fellow organisations, this will mean that if you work with us then you will have access to your audience data.
We will publish these agreements and accompanying data, and lead the sector on best practice and new methodologies.
We recently took part in the Culture Counts audience data trial and we will continue to test new methods of measuring audiences and impact.
In our next round of Audience Labs we will be working with organisations and partners to look at audiences across the UK and as part of our national remit.
We will be developing Audience and Marketing ‘toolkits’ with hints, tips and best practice from industry experts and fellow artists, creating a one stop resources to support you in promoting your work.
We will be exploring audience and artistic impact with the introduction of our Annual Report exploring data driven narratives with the artists and composer on our programmes.
All of the above activity and much more will become part of our Creative Audiences Programme, where we will be looking further at language and perceptions of new music.
We will also continue to listen to what you need.
If you have any ideas, comments or thoughts, please do share them with us at: marketing@soundandmusic.org @soundandmusic #newmusic
