The 21st Century Business Model

In the opening chapter, we saw how relationships between producers and audiences are undergoing a fundamental shift, with audiences becoming increasingly involved in the creative process. In this chapter, we will move on to consider the repercussions of this phenomenon by exploring how traditional business models are evolving in the arts and entertainment industry: popular music and the performing arts.

Assessing the Value of the Arts

This chapter presents a general introduction to the contemporary concern of public value in relation to the arts, and particularly how this relates to the concept of social impact — an issue that has dominated the public funding agenda for the arts in the UK and beyond since the 1990s. What follows is an analysis of how the public value of the arts has been framed and assessed in recent times, and how this reflects adaptations to changes in the political climate. This analysis will be illustrated through a brief historical and conceptual overview of attempts to capture public value, followed by a review and critical evaluation of some models and frameworks that have attempted to capture the benefits of the arts. The challenges of assessing and measuring value will then be further discussed through case study on the National Theatre of Scotland’s production, Black Watch, to demonstrate the reductive nature of traditional models and point towards the need for developing more nuanced and reflexive approaches to assessing value, informed (and preferably led) by the practice of the art in question. We can call this a ‘situational’ approach to research. The chapter therefore argues for approaches informed by these principles. Drawing parallels with themes from Performance Studies, it suggests that greater account needs to be given to context and the conditions of the context, including its social formation and relations, which requires reflexivity and ethnographic analysis. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the dialectical conditions of value (as both instrumental and intrinsic), particularly emphasising the spatial dimension of practice, which emphasises that the arts are not just situated in a temporal context of ideological shifts, but are active players in the making of value as a practice of cultural production. This spatial dimension is brought into being as a practice of social relations through articulations of inter-subjective values, thereby broadening the dialogue on the subject of public value and considering the productive value of the arts as a wider practice of living.

The Funding Agenda Social relations and the politics of cultural production

Are the arts, so to speak, on the ‘muck heap’ of public spending? From the point of view of an arts activist, or any advocate of public spending on the arts, particularly in times of austerity, it can certainly appear that arts funding is lobbed out of the window at the first opportunity. At best, it appears that many in the arts sector are expected to feed off the scraps of funding from the residue of public spending. There is a certain ‘sink or swim’ attitude that prevails, where the environment of the liquid (or not so liquid) marketplace is deemed the ultimate arbiter of value. However, and despite the protestations of some who may espouse a more Darwinian economic model, making art (whatever the quality) and making money(or should that be making a profit?) are not always going to be in the same trajectory. Sure, at one extreme, some commercial contexts of the creative arts and entertainment industry make some people very rich (and can often employ very many people), but that does not mean that productions will turna profit or that companies will not goout of business, even if they make millionaires and stars out of individuals. The point being, a market-driven privatisation of individual talent, skills and product can have negative effects for the wider ecology of a company or sector. For the everyday arts company or practitioner, the economics is much smaller in scale than that of the celebrity industry; nevertheless, sustainability is as key a concern. Sustainability is the watchword, then, which is why systematic business models are keenly sought out within the sector (see www.missionmodelsmoney.org.uk). The point of this chapter, though, is not to provide such a model but to point out that such models are themselves subject to more systemic economic and political conditions, and crucially, social relations. Traditionally, public funds have been a key issue, not just in broadening the scope and range of access and participation (including the training of artists), but also of sector sustainability, under the broad rubric of public good. And therein lies the conundrum: what does‘public good’ actually come to mean?

The 21st Century Venue

A fundamental ingredient of presenting quality arts and entertainment experiences to contemporary audiences is the imaginative design, management and use of the places in which they happen: the venues. This chapter will continue to explore the changing relationship between audiences, producers and presenters of live arts and entertainment by looking at the design and use of physical spaces. Whether we are talking about a large arena,a formal theatre space, a temporary performing space or a mobile cinema, many of the issues facing producers and managers are similar. This chapter will explore a number of issues affecting the design and use of spaces — large and small, formal and informal — and the current trends in venue design and management for presenting entertainment and hearts. In the course of the chapter, we will consider topics such as the history of venue design and the justifications for different venues and building processes, as well as design issues including inclusivity, sustainability,flexibility and the use of technology. Trends including the move towards intimacy and transparency will be looked at in the context of how these issues relate to key values, such as equality, community, innovation and empowerment of the individual.

Cultural Entrepreneurship

We are all entrepreneurs ... to some extent. As humans, we are gifted with imagination andthe ability to think creatively, and we are sometimes inclined to take risks by making choices that have uncertain future outcomes and implications. Zaharudin (2006) likens entrepreneurs to adventurers, in the sense that they often embark upon journeys into the unknown. Like adventurers, entrepreneurs need to be prepared for their journeys so as not to come to any harm along the way. By researching the journey ahead, and taking into account risks along the way, entrepreneurs are more likely to succeed upon their chosen path. We are often inclined to consider entrepreneurs as ‘business people’ and the reward for entrepreneurial activities as financial gain. There is an ongoing debate as to what the true meaning of entrepreneur actually is — between those who focus exclusively on the economic function of entrepreneurship and those who consider it the personal behaviours of the individuals who undertake the economic activity (Willax, 2003). In Ford’s (1998) article examining entrepreneurial stereotypes, hestates: ‘I searched the dictionary, which defines an entrepreneur as “one who organizes, manages and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise”. While this definition describes the entrepreneurial function, it somehow misses the attitude and philosophy of the matter’.

The Future of Home Entertainment

The aim of this chapter is to explore the current scope and character of home entertainment in its many electronic forms (including television, video games and music) focusing particularly on the changing nature of consumer interaction with it. Through an examination of the various forces that have driven its development, the chapter will look at the more significant aspects of its evolution in the decade since 2000 and make some informed judgements about how it might develop in the next. The term ‘home entertainment’ has covered a vast range of activities during its long history. The first well-documented evidence of people spending significant time and resources on entertaining themselves at home emerge from Sumerian, Roman and Greek texts. As Juvenal notes, it seemed that all Romans were interested in was ‘bread and circuses’, and from relatively early time, wealthier ones saw the opportunity to have both at home,hosting their own dinner parties and banquets. Along with dinner could be music, singing, and dancing by professionals. Such group activities might also be accompanied by more solitary pursuits such as reading, and individuals making their own entertainment through playing musical instruments or reciting poetry.

The Future of Broadcasting

At the end of the last century, a dictionary could confidently define broadcasting as the transmission of a signal for television or radio. Within a decade, every element of that definition had changed. Transmission had branched out from the cumbersome business of placing masts bearing receivers and transmitters at the highest vantage points across the countryside. A signal was no longer confined to the band waves that the air could carry — invisible streams snaking their way across the landscape: Ultra High Frequency (UHF) carrying television, as long as the hills weren’t in the way; Very High Frequency (VHF or FM)carrying wonderful quality sound, as long as the same hills were not joined by chimneys, bodies, the wrong sort of cloud or stonework; Long Wave, unstoppable by anything except distance, it seemed,carrying cricket and the shipping forecast across Europe and far out to sea; Medium Wave(AM), the carrier of choice for hosts of daytime local music stations and great for listening in the car, but hopeless when night fell and the waves went bouncing around the ionosphere bringing martial music from Albania where the football commentary should have been; and Short Wave — the touchiest of the wave bands, that made catching the words as hard as catching fish, but finally gave national broadcasters a global reach.

The Audience Experience Changing roles and relationships

This chapter will focus on the changing role of the modern-day consumer and audience member and explore the implications of this development for arts and entertainment organisations. It will begin with an exploration of the ‘experience economy’ (Pine and Gilmore, 1999), demonstrating how the changing needs, abilities and expectations of audiences and consumers are effecting revolutionary shift in behaviour from the traditional push from producers towards a creative dialogue, where consumers have at least a voice and sometimes even an equal role as artist and co-producer. The chapter will go on to discuss the rise of what we’ll call ‘creative interaction’, the intermediary space where professional artists, producers, venues and content providers join their audiences and consumers to create or experience something new together. This discussion will be underpinned by a focus on the changing role and mission of arts and entertainment organisations from privileged gatekeepers to facilitators.

Intellectual Property in the Digital Age

Once a backwater of law that elicited little interest beyond arts and entertainment industries and their lawyers, over the past generation, copyright law has become a major arena of social and political conflict. Many clashes amount to tactical skirmishes among companies for competitive advantage — a long and familiar dynamicin copyright law. But much of the turmoil revolves around a deeper issue: what legal principles and social norms should be used to promote new creativity, especially when the Internet and other digital technologies are involved? Many Internet users, academics, software programmers, artists and citizens criticise the expansion of copyright law and its enforcement as an obnoxious limitation on their basic freedoms. Content industries, for their part (with significant exceptions among large Internet-based companies like Google) tend to regard expansive copyright protection and enforcement as indispensable for sustaining creativity itself. This chapter describes the profound shifts that copyright law has undergone over the past 20 years as digital technologies have disrupted mass media markets and changed people’s stake in copyright law. As we saw in Chapter 2, the 20th century business models for media industries treated people as passive audiences, whose chief role was to ‘consume’ works made by professionals and sold in the marketplace. This changed with the arrival of the Internet. Telecommunications and digital technologies have enabled ordinary people to become prolific creators in their own right. The ‘people formerly known as the audience’, in Jay Rosen’s memorable phrase (Rosen, 2006), have become bloggers, musicians, remix artists, video producers, website curators, hackers, academic collaborators, and much else. Ordinary people can generate, copy, modify and share works with a global public without having to deal with commercial content intermediaries such as publishers, record labels or studios.

Responsible Entertainment Greening festivals and events

This chapter explores the contemporary issue of responsible production within the arts and entertainment industries, focusing on live music events and festivals in particular. In its broadest context the entertainment industry is vast, encompassing 18 unique sectors (Moss, 2009), each providing a plethora of tangible and intangible products that, according to Vogel (2007), is estimated at US$1 trillion annually. This makes it the largest industry in the world, generating more revenue and growing at an exponential rate as leisure time becomes increasingly important as an escape from,or antidote to, the pressures of modern life. Live events bridge the distinction between high art products which are considered as a ‘merit good’ (Pratt, 2005) and forms of popular culture and leisure that can be consumed both at home and in designated public spaces. Hughes (2000) states that live performance of both art and entertainment is a distinct area for management, as such events require active participation on the part of an audience. As pop/rock consumers can now choose from ‘an almost limitless number of events’ (Mintel Group, 2008) at any given time, the viability of continued growth in the industry becomes of real concern, and the impact of such intense consumption levels can no longer be ignored.