Let’s call a spade a spade. Dynamic pricing is a method for maximizing profits. The fact that an airline is willing to sell me a cheap ticket in January to some cold and cloudy city doesn’t constitute altruism on its part. Likewise, selling a cheap ticket for a seat in the nosebleeds, or to a show that isn’t moving, is not charity on the part of a nonprofit arts group when that seat would have gone empty at a higher price. I find it particularly odd that these lower priced tickets are said to be aimed at improving accessibility when organizations reserve the right to increase prices (higher than as previously advertised, even) if a show takes off at the box office.

… the ability of an arts organization to adapt its programs, strategies, structures, and systems to address continuous external change and seize fleeting opportunities will become a leading indicator of success and a primary measure of organizational health. In this new era, successful organizations will more deeply recognize and engage with the creativity and artistic potential of the larger community, and the dominant organizational model will change to one that is porous, open, and responsive.

This shift will require new forms of strategic thinking, organizational nimbleness, and a commitment to remaining transitory (not to efficiency, specialty, and technical rigidity). Wider definitions of success will center on helping foster “expressive lives” in our communities (a term introduced to arts policy by Bill Ivey), more than on developing a professional cultural community for its own sake. As Samuel Jones wrote recently, “We have moved from a model of provision to one of enabling. The role of the cultural professional has changed.”

Here’s the other thing. Arts institutions are all about introducing technological gimmicks in the name of “outreach” and “embracing new audiences”, but what audience do we see contributing to the aforementioned bucket? Composers, PR people, hardcore new-music bloggers, the occasional “real critic”, i.e. the audience who would come to the concert anyway, and pay for it happily, too.