Statistics music venues

usefulness and necessity of collecting data

How? What? Why? do we collect?

Principles of data collectingIndividual use• Benchmarking

– Responder (venue) is and stays the owner of the data– Improving your own business by comparing your data to other venues

• Political– Lobbying on a local and regional level

Collective use• Collecting and publishing collective data - Representing the sector with annual publications (media, pr)

• Political, economical, social– Use for policy, strategy, collective interests and research – Lobbying on a national level

How do we collect?

Collecting data (of previous calender year)- annually- through an online survey- collecting data about capacity, activities and

visitors (January-February)- collecting data about employees and finance

(March-June)- checking and analysing data (July-August)- publishing data and benchmark tool (September)

What do we collect?

First of all- Only asking for relevant data

- Important to collect only data that are comparible, so have very clear definitions. Questions should not be multi-interpretable.

- Important to collect only data related to the concert halls (thus not count the data of the cinema, theatre or restaurant of some venues) to make sure data of venues are comparible

Survey part A Organisation and Accomodation

• Legal structure of organisation?• Which different functions has the venue?• Who owns the building?• How many buildings, how many concert halls?• Capacity per concert hall and total capacity?

Survey part BProgram, activities, visitors

• How many activities?Divided in activities with paid entrance, activities with free entrance and non-public activities (private rental /leisure)

Not divided in genres, but divided in:- Concerts (music)- Dance nights (music)- Other activities (non-music)

How many visitors?Divided in paid entrance and free entrance

Survey part BProgram, activities, visitors

Activities in the concert halls with paid entrance

Number of activities

Of which sold out

Number ofbands/acts

Of which from abroad

Number of paid visits

Number of free visits

(gueslist)

Concerts 91

18 238

78

22681

2323

Dance nights 67

26

364

117 26508 1458

Subtotal music 158

44

602

195 49189

3781

Other (non-music) activities

21

11 X X 8275 29

Total activities 179 55 X X 57464 3810

Survey part CCatering

• Selling prices of beer, wine and soft drinks

Drink Selling price(in euro)

volume glass(in centiliter)

Softdrink

Beer

Wine

Survey part DEmployees

• Number of persons• Number of Full Time Equivalents (FTE)

• Classification according to finances, i.e.- own payroll- hired (freelancers, payroll) - Volunteers

• Classification according to function, i.e.- programming/booking- marketing/publicity- technicians- catering/bar

What Collective Labour Agreement (CAO) is used?

Survey part EFinancial

• Expenses- Employees costs- Volunteer costs- Direct program costs- Marketing and publicity costs- Housing costs- Purchase costs catering- Other expenses

Survey part EFinancial

• Income- Ticket sales- Catering sales- Municipal exploitation subsidy- Municipal housing subsidy- Municipal wages subsidy- Programming subsidy- Sponsorship- Private leisure- Other income

the use of benchmarking

Data loaded into online benchmark system PAS:www.poppodium.analysesysteem.nl preview

• Linking efforts and achievements• Costs and revenues per activity and per visitor• Comparing your data with earlier years (progress,

trends)• Comparing your data to other, similar venues• Highlighting strengths and weaknesses

Examples of succesfull use of individual benchmarking

External- Venue got more subsidy from local government because it

was statistically proven that all comparible music venues in the Netherlands got a higher % of subsidy

Internal- Venue reduced hours (FTE) of technical staff, after noticing

comparible venues used far less hours for technicians for the same amount of concerts

- Venue improved marketing efforts, after noticing comparible venues had much more visitors through investing in marketing employees and costs per activity

- Venue increased revenues of drinks per visitor, after noticing people drink more at other venues per visit

Principles of data collectingIndividual use• Benchmarking

– Responder (venue) is and stays the owner of the data– Improving your own business by comparing your data to other venues

• Political– Lobbying on a local and regional level

Collective use• Collecting and publishing collective data - Representing the sector with annual publications (media, pr)

• Political, economical, social– Use for policy, strategy, collective interests and research – Lobbying on a national level

Collective data

Annual publication ‘Music venues in figures’

Collective data

Capacity >1000Capacity 400-1000Capacity <400

Collective data

Program costs 34,2 mln (37%)

Employees costs 31,0 mln (33%)

Housing costs 10,5 mln (11%)

Catering costs 7,7 mln (8%)

Other costs 9,4 mln (10%)

Average expenses of all venues

Collective data

Visitors per concerts

Visitors per dance night

Average number of paying visitors per concert and per dance night

Collective dataaverage ticket price & catering expenses per visit

average program costs & ticket price per visit

average ticket price

average catering expenses

average ticket priceaverage program costs

Collective dataThe main conclusions from the figures for 2010 (compared to 2009):

Decrease in the total number of music activities (7%) Reduction of total visits (8%) Increase in private rental Decrease in the number and proportion of volunteers in small stages Continued strong increase in program costs (mainly due to rising

wages) and therefore an increase of the average ticket prize (rise of 65% in 6 years)

An improved total financial result (revenues equal expenditures, compared to 2.2 million loss last year)

Collective data

• Annual publication ‘Music venues in figures’• Delivering data to ´Central Buro of Statistics´

(CBS) in the Netherlands• Delivering data to ‘Ministry of Culture’• Delivering data to ´Atlas for Municipalities´ in

the Netherlands• Delivering (some specific) data to National Tax

Authorities

Summary

• Better insight in your own organisation• Benchmark with other similar venues and improve• Trends and developments visible to participate on• Lobby instrument on a local, regional and national

level• Increasing attention from media and government• Tool for the industry association to determine policy

and strategy and set priorities• Facts instead of speculations and indications• Knowledge is power!

Any questions?