The arts organizations represented in the survey tend to agree with the notions that the cyberspace and social media have "increased engagement" and made fine art a more participatory experience, and that they take helped brand "arts audiences more diverse." They also tend to agree that the internet has "played a major role in broadening the boundaries of what is considered art."
Figure 22

Still at the same time, the majority of arts organizations surveyed also idea that mobile devices, ringing cell phones and texting create "meaning disruptions" to alive performances, and that engineering contributes to an expectation that "all digital content should be free." Survey respondents were split up regarding their opinions of whether applied science had negatively impacted audience attention spans for live performance, but they uniformly disagree that it has "diluted the arts" by opening new pathways to arts participation and arts criticism.

Figure 23

Despite comments in open-ended responses, merely 35% of respondents agree with the statement that the internet has shifted arts organizations' focus towards marketing and promotion, and even fewer (22%) thought that the internet and its endless offerings are leading to a decrease in attendance at in-person events.

Predicting impacts of engineering science and social media

Asked to forecast the affect that technology and social media volition have on the field equally a whole in the coming years, respondents mentioned everything from practical implications to broader, soul-searching ideas about the future of creativity.

From a practical standpoint, many organizations state that technology volition make them more efficient:

[We have the] ability to serve more people and at a lower cost.

The internet makes it possible for our system to market ourselves more effectively through online advertising, web log presences, and social media exchanges. Nosotros have been able to decrease our budgets and increment revenue past utilizing online resources effectively.

It is also profoundly facilitating their ability to book talent, and to know what to wait:

For arts programmers, the access to loftier quality media to review artists in advance of assessing them live has been a huge step forward. Spotify alone has made it so much easier to get a start impression of an creative person–no more waiting for printing kits, accessing only what they've posted on their websites, etc.

Others commented on how technology is changing the behavior of the ticket-buying public:

Concluding-infinitesimal ticket-buying and the trend away from traditional subscription packages will probably continue, equally the internet has freed people upwardly from having to plan for most event omnipresence far in advance. This will affect the predictability of revenue. On the positive side, social media has been a wonderful tool for discussion-of-rima oris marketing.

While it is incommunicable to know what net and digital technologies volition be like in 10 years, the trend of more than information communicated more quickly to a more finely targeted audience with more than immediate feedback from the recipient is likely to go along. We believe that this leads people to delay their decision-making about how they volition spend their leisure time. For our field, this has generally meant a decline in subscriptions, a decrease in advance ticket sales, and an increment in terminal-infinitesimal box office sales.

Moving beyond the applied, one of the prevailing positive themes is that technology increases – and will go along to increase – admission to the arts. In some cases, applied science is but seen as a mode to meliorate marketing and communication to go more "butts in seats," but many respondents noted its ability to broaden and deepen the audition feel.

Technology is helping them introduce more audiences to art:

The digital earth is a very populist force, leveling the earth betwixt rich and poor, educated and uneducated. In our instance, an organization with a proper name like "Historical Society" has an invisible shield that bounces people who are below median income, exercise not agree college degrees, who hold blue collar jobs, who are a racial or cultural minority, off. The ubiquity of the computer, whether through your home machine, school, or local library, means that all of those things that cause discomfort don't matter. That is a large deal!

It has extended our visibility to many isolated individuals who may never accept heard about our services, explored the artform, or who may have financial barriers to membership. Nosotros show to them every 24-hour interval what nosotros do, rather than expect them to notice a printed annual report and plan summary. Social media are concrete and immediate examples of our living community in activity.

Technology is also helping arts organizations extend their impact, far across a one-time operation or event:

The internet and digital media provide an amazing opportunity for arts organizations to extend the impact of the arts. A live performance tin be complemented profoundly by opportunities for further appointment and education, and the ability to share information online maximizes our ability to provide these opportunities at a more in-scale investment ratio. We tin attain many more people with an commodity or video than with a one-time lecture, for case.

We are able to provide artwork that dates dorsum more than 25 years to the communities we have worked with over the years. For many, these archives represent the only media history of their customs. The apply of the internet has deepened and expanded the access for our constituencies that are oft transitional, without a landbase, or have been historically isolated due to geography.

Technology is increasing admission to the arts by breaking geographic constraints:

I think that it will greatly improve accessibility to the arts field – from a budgetary standpoint and from a logistical standpoint. People who alive exterior of urban areas will exist able to experience performances that are somewhat limited to large urban areas. Arts organizations will need to reconsider the level/type of interaction with their audition.

Engineering science is helping organizations attain more diverse communities – even on a global calibration:

The greatest bear on will be the ability for non-profit organizations to share educational content and stimulating art and performances worldwide. It will also spark conversations between diverse communities and aid individuals develop a greater understanding – and hopefully, a life-long appreciation for the arts.

The internet volition enable the performing arts to accomplish beyond a local audience, promote tourism, and brand cultural arts created within a region accessible to the nation – and world.

Technology is making it possible to create community effectually a slice of art:

At that place is a powerful opportunity for the arts to create communities around performances, shows, exhibitions and their themes and history. For case, a Broadway evidence like 'Side by side to Normal' could (and probably has) created communities to hash out and share resources on mental illness.

Some organizations enthusiastically talk near the democratization of fine art and cosmos, while others expressed excitement about the claiming of coming together new demands and expectations:

Continuing the transition from passive to participation, from hierarchical to democratic, from traditional media to online media, from single fine art-form to inter-disciplinary.

The possibility to greatly expand and create a more than diverse audience is very exciting because traditionally our audience has been older and whiter than the area we live in. Increasingly, nosotros're seeing some of our content getting traction in surprising nooks and crannies of the internet – which definitely means a shifting audience. The challenge will be for that audition to place our content with the creators and the institution, and not simply have it exist as more entertainment or noise out on the internet. In the side by side couple of years, the function of mobile devices will only continue to shift how people curate their ain experience and engage with creative content. In radio, this presents an exciting AND daunting claiming in terms of our funding structure and station loyalty.

The challenges that digital technology present

These arts organizations realize that with these benefits come drawbacks. While digital technologies accept led to the creation of e'er-more than dazzling tools and apps, many arts organizations worry well-nigh the long term issue on audiences, the field, and their very mission.

A number of respondents worry nigh meeting increased audition expectations:

People volition have higher expectations for a live event. For audiences to invest the time and effort of going to a alive performance, the work they come across volition have to be more than engaging and of higher quality. Events volition have to exist more social and allow for greater participation and behind-the-scenes access. The upshot spaces volition have to be more beautiful, more than comfortable, more inviting and more than accessible.

The audience has already moved from "arts attendance every bit an event" to "arts attendance as an experience." This desire for a full-range of positive experience from ticket buy, to travel, to parking, to treatment at the space, to quality of performance, to exit – this will only increment over the next 10 years.

The greatest impact of the internet on independent publishers will be audience expectations. Audiences will expect everything to be available digitally, and will require an engaging feel instead of a static 1.

Some point out the problem of meeting audience expectations on a limited budget:

Managing expectations. The internet and digital technologies are powerful tools. The public expects content to be costless. There is a lack of awareness of the resources (funding and staff) that it takes to manage and preserve digital content. These costs will need to be passed on to users.

Others express concern that the try to run across audience expectations volition influence artistic choices, fifty-fifty entire art forms:

Some ideas cannot be condensed into 140 characters or less. I hope technologies do not negatively affect the playwright. I hope the playwright does not write solely for a Twitter generation.

Live operation will be diminished. Younger people don't want to bear witness up at a specific time, specific place for live performance — they want to download music at their own convenience. The power of alive operation is lost and the borough convening – the community building is lost.

Some arts organizations have recognized this change, and are doing their best to accommodate:

I believe digital technologies are here to stay, and nosotros equally an artform should embrace them and larn how to piece of work alongside them. We provide scripts to those sitting in our tweetseats, then they get the quotes right. Nosotros must work aslope or face alienating them.

I believe that audiences will go along to have shorter and shorter attention spans and will insist upon being able to use smartphones and other devices in the context of a performance. As an industry, we should stop fighting and endeavour to find ways to incorporate that reality into our daily lives.

Nosotros volition need to get much less tied to live, in person programming and certainly less ties to anchored seats in concert halls. Programming volition need to contain much more personal involvement by the consumers or they will not be interested in engaging.

A number of respondents worried virtually audiences' decreasing attention spans, and the long-term impact on the field:

As attending spans decrease, programming of longer works (eastward.g., Beethoven'southward Symphony #nine) will get more problematic. As we move forward, we may demand to consider ways to cover the digital, connected earth to better engage live audiences or run the gamble of making live music performances irrelevant.

The greatest bear on could exist the expansion of our audiences, only the worst impact is the attention span of the moment of interaction. I worry that it may shorten our artforms' performance times.

Applied science has blurred the lines betwixt commercial entertainment and noncommercial fine art, forcing arts organizations to more directly compete with all other forms of entertainment:

Basically, nosotros are competing for the "entertainment slot" in people'southward schedules, and the more entertainment they can get via HD TV, Netflix, Video Games, etc., the less time they have for live performances, which also entails making an effort to get to the venue (as opposed to slumping on the couch in forepart of the HD screen). Too, movies, video games, etc., are both more convenient and cheaper than alive performances.

It has also blurred the lines between a virtual and real experience:

Equally the realism of participatory digital amusement (video games, etc.) and the immersion ability of non-participatory digital entertainment (3D movies, etc.) increases, it threatens the elements that brand the live arts unique–the sense of immediacy, immersion, and personal interaction with the art. We've long hung fast to the belief that there's nothing similar a live experience, merely digital entertainment is getting closer and closer to replicating that experience, and live theatre will struggle to compete with the onetime'due south convenience and cost.

Some respondents addressed bug specific to their field or discipline. Film and movie theater organizations talk almost the pressure they face to preserve the "specialness" of the big screen when on-demand home viewing is already prevalent:

As a movie theater approaching our fifth ceremony, we have seen pregnant audience growth in spite of the fact that many of the films we play are beingness released "day and appointment" on-need. While streaming and piracy are increasing, we've been able to deliver the message that seeing films on the big screen with an audience is a atypical, important cultural experience. I can't emphasize the importance of the cyberspace and social media in our marketing efforts plenty. It'due south almost certainly a net positive value.

As a film exhibitor, our challenge is to go through the digital convergence for projection and exhibition, a supremely costly change that doesn't even have a long-range viability (these systems will have to exist upgraded and/or changed every 3-5 years). Finding the revenue for these digital systems is an enormous challenge and threat to our ongoing activities.

Others working in motion picture worry that the quality and quantity of movies will diminish:

In the field of film production and distribution, more internet and digital access volition result in far fewer pic theaters, as audiences accept greater access in their homes to the medium. Already, as marketing dollars become more than limited for films, product companies are shortening the movie lifespan in a movie house and moving them to digital and telly media sooner and sooner.

Organizations in the literary book tradition are facing similar challenges with ebooks:

Literature and the book are being very impacted by digital technologies due to the growing popularity of ebooks and to the influence of huge online booksellers like Amazon. There are both expert and bad effects associated with these technologies. These days books are more than easily accessible to a greater number of people however it is difficult for the book industry to produce a sustainable corporeality of income whether for individuals and for organizations. It is crucial that the public understand the importance of supporting nonprofit literary orgs, publishers, contained bookstores, libraries and other supporters of book civilization and in plough it is crucial for foundations and government to provide this back up.

All literary magazines are in peril right at present, so if magazines such equally ours continue to be information technology volition be considering of a paradigm shift in how literature is funded as an art form in the U.S. I am loathe to believe that print publications will cease to exist considering they are nevertheless more beautiful, but all publishers volition eventually have to create simultaneous digital and impress editions, I imagine, which will brand the whole enterprise more than expensive.

Some respondents worry that these disruptive technological and cultural forces will make it harder for some big calibration artforms to survive:

I believe that the more expensive arts producers ­– symphony orchestras, for example – will find it more difficult to depict enough audience to continue in the same way they've operated for the by decades. Smaller groups will find it easier to conform because they're more flexible (they don't require a big stage and hall). I am very concerned near losing some of the greatest music ever written — symphonic music — for this reason.

Others pointed to innovative experiments — similar the Metropolitan Opera'southward performances in movie theatres — equally an example of what big institutions with funding can exercise:

For opera, information technology has made it more accessible, by providing low-cost performance broadcast of Met performances. This has increased the potential audience for our alive performances. Information technology is our companies responsible to promote effectively to those audiences. Overall I believe the effect is positive.

Museums accept a unique perspective on technology's touch. Information technology has greatly improved their cataloging efforts, but some worry that information technology will eventually reduce audience interest in the "real thing":

Information technology will radically shift the fashion in which we catalog and share data nearly collections; the museum equally less the all knowing dominance and more the conduit for rich institution-driven AND user-driven information. Information technology volition also allow regional collections the ability to link to similar collections worldwide – as such our local collections can be recontextualize and made meaningful in ways not possible without linked data and semantic web technologies.

Digital technology and the resulting accessibility of information and images, while fostering accessibility of collections online, have the negative touch of diluting the desire of individuals to visit the museum to come across works of art in person.

A number of organizations mentioned the demise of trusted critics and filters, which has happened as print media — peculiarly local newspapers — have cut back on staff and struggled with decreased advertisement revenue as part of this digital transition. Without critics, they worry near how arts audiences volition estimate quality:

Digital technologies take substantially made it impossible for book critics to support themselves in traditional ways; possibly the side by side x years will bring the shift of book criticism to academic world, where salaries are paid for teaching, and reviewing is a secondary activity. Twenty-five years ago, working critics had total time salaries from newspapers, magazines, other publications. Today in that location are just a handful of critics able to do this.

Our principal concern for the literary arts is the increasing "validity" of cocky-publication among reviewers, readers, and writers. Online publishing and book sales through Amazon (for example) contribute to this problem. If at that place are no gatekeepers, it volition go fifty-fifty more difficult to describe attention to works of genuinely high quality.

For some, the absenteeism of critics and mainstream media previews of arts events means that arts organizations are shouldering an even greater burden:

The demise of daily and weekly newspapers and the increasing fragmentation of traditional radio and idiot box media outlets combined with the increasing consolidation of media ownership due to revised FCC regulations has marginalized arts coverage and criticism to a point where it no longer plays a role in the larger borough chat. Hence, it is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve and appoint potential audience members and arts participants, and has shifted the entire burden (and costs) to arts organizations that are ill equipped and unprepared to both appoint in their traditional function (i.e., back up the creation and presentation of art work) also as build back up structures to take the place of traditional media organizations.

Some responses addressed the future of artists themselves. There is recognition that today'due south artists must besides be entrepreneurs:

Digital technologies will level the playing field for all and one-time school, professional artists will be left behind. Information technology is the advent of the amateur. For those who are savvy and ahead of the curve, there is money to be made if the content is strong. It means the complete reversal of a contributed based model founded on single funding sources and moves toward an earned acquirement model and crowd sourced funding. Now more than always, artists need to be entrepreneurs and not simply artists. You tin't survive at present as an artist unless you lot have a potent business organisation model.

Withal others worried openly about how artists will make a living every bit traditional acquirement streams shift or disappear:

[The internet] is becoming the major distribution platform for documentaries, which is what nosotros practise. The DVD will be gone in x years. Artists are going to struggle to monetize their work on the Web.

Access will exist skillful for educational purposes and to increase awareness of the arts especially historical material in operation of all types. All the same, issues of copyright and payment for that textile, such as in apps and in streaming or downloading, are murky and hard to navigate for artists themselves every bit to value and fairness of payments to the artist for original content.

There were too some wistful responses about the affect of technology on culture. Ane respondent pointed out that the ability to collaborate globally could lead to more cultural homogeneity while some other worried about the hereafter of non-digitized fine art:

Digital technologies allows for students and artists all over the world to be inspired by i another. In some means this is fantastic, in other means, this breaks down the cultural differences that is so beautiful about having multiple countries involved in an art form.

Materials nosotros have that aren't bachelor digitally will be lost from the human being tape.

Finally, several respondents summed up the issues facing arts organizations, connecting the challenges of meeting audience expectations with limited funding options:

Attendance at live performances will favor more fervent fans and those with disposable incomes who reside in cities, and the increased prevalence of simulcasts and livestreams will alter the viewing experience while also making information technology more democratic and affordable. Audiences will expect the digital presence of institutions to be well maintained and curated.

Organizations will continue to need to adapt and incorporate digital technologies into their programming. This will be a adept thing for fine art consumers and patrons past increasing accessibility and improving collaboration. At the same time, organizations will struggle with funding to go on up with technology. Funders and so rarely fund some of the infrastructure necessary to create summit-notch digital programming, and that will exist a major struggle.

Survey results reveal that on a purely practical level, the internet, digital technologies and social media are powerful tools, giving arts organizations new means to promote events, engage with audiences, accomplish new patrons, and extend the life and scope of their work. "We can reach more patrons, more than frequently, for less coin," said ane respondent. "That'due south been a huge alter in the 30 years I've been in the business organisation."

But, technology has likewise disrupted much of the traditional art world; it has inverse audition expectations, put more pressure on arts organizations to participate actively in social media, and even undercut some arts groups' missions and acquirement streams.

Beyond the practical, the internet and social media provide these arts organizations with broad cultural opportunities. Comments in this survey reveal an array of innovative means that arts organizations are using technology to introduce new audiences to their work, betrayal more of their collections, provide deeper context around plays and exhibits, and intermission down cultural and geographic barriers that, to this point, have made it difficult for some members of the public to participate. Their responses propose that the majority of these arts organizations, with enough funding and foresight, are eager to utilize the new digitals tools to sustain and amplify their mission-driven work.