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

Even so at the same time, the majority of arts organizations surveyed also thought that mobile devices, ringing cell phones and texting create "significant disruptions" to live performances, and that technology contributes to an expectation that "all digital content should exist costless." Survey respondents were split regarding their opinions of whether engineering had negatively impacted audience attending spans for alive functioning, 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 up-concluded responses, only 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 subtract in omnipresence at in-person events.

Predicting impacts of technology and social media

Asked to forecast the impact that engineering and social media will accept on the field as a whole in the coming years, respondents mentioned everything from practical implications to broader, soul-searching ideas about the hereafter of creativity.

From a practical standpoint, many organizations land that engineering will brand them more than efficient:

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

The internet makes it possible for our organization to market ourselves more effectively through online advertizement, blog presences, and social media exchanges. We have been able to decrease our budgets and increment revenue past utilizing online resource effectively.

It is also profoundly facilitating their power to book talent, and to know what to expect:

For arts programmers, the access to high quality media to review artists in advance of assessing them alive has been a huge step forward. Spotify alone has made it then much easier to go a first impression of an artist–no more waiting for press kits, accessing only what they've posted on their websites, etc.

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

Concluding-minute ticket-buying and the trend away from traditional subscription packages will probably go on, equally the internet has freed people upwards from having to plan for nigh result attendance far in accelerate. This will affect the predictability of revenue. On the positive side, social media has been a wonderful tool for word-of-mouth marketing.

While it is impossible to know what internet and digital technologies will be like in 10 years, the trend of more information communicated more than chop-chop to a more finely targeted audition with more immediate feedback from the recipient is likely to proceed. We believe that this leads people to delay their decision-making about how they volition spend their leisure time. For our field, this has more often than not meant a decline in subscriptions, a decrease in advance ticket sales, and an increase in last-minute box function sales.

Moving beyond the practical, 1 of the prevailing positive themes is that technology increases – and will keep to increase – access to the arts. In some cases, technology is simply seen as a way to improve marketing and communication to get more "butts in seats," only many respondents noted its ability to augment and deepen the audience experience.

Technology is helping them innovate more audiences to art:

The digital world is a very populist force, leveling the world between rich and poor, educated and uneducated. In our case, an system with a proper noun similar "Historical Society" has an invisible shield that bounces people who are below median income, do not concord college degrees, who concur blue collar jobs, who are a racial or cultural minority, off. The ubiquity of the figurer, whether through your domicile auto, 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 have heard almost our services, explored the artform, or who may have financial barriers to membership. We show to them every 24-hour interval what we practise, rather than expect them to observe a printed annual written report and program summary. Social media are concrete and immediate examples of our living customs in activity.

Applied science is besides helping arts organizations extend their bear upon, far beyond a 1-fourth dimension operation or event:

The cyberspace and digital media provide an amazing opportunity for arts organizations to extend the touch on of the arts. A live performance can exist complemented greatly past opportunities for further engagement and teaching, and the ability to share data online maximizes our ability to provide these opportunities at a more than in-calibration investment ratio. We can attain many more people with an article or video than with a 1-fourth dimension lecture, for example.

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

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

I think that it will greatly meliorate accessibility to the arts field – from a monetary standpoint and from a logistical standpoint. People who live outside 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 audience.

Engineering science is helping organizations reach more diverse communities – even on a global scale:

The greatest impact will exist the ability for non-profit organizations to share educational content and stimulating art and performances worldwide. It will too spark conversations betwixt various communities and aid individuals develop a greater understanding – and hopefully, a life-long appreciation for the arts.

The internet will enable the performing arts to reach beyond a local audition, promote tourism, and make cultural arts created within a region attainable to the nation – and world.

Technology is making information technology possible to create community around a slice of art:

There is a powerful opportunity for the arts to create communities around performances, shows, exhibitions and their themes and history. For example, a Broadway evidence like 'Next to Normal' could (and probably has) created communities to discuss and share resource on mental affliction.

Some organizations enthusiastically talk about the democratization of art and cosmos, while others expressed excitement about the challenge of meeting new demands and expectations:

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

The possibility to greatly expand and create a more diverse audience is very heady because traditionally our audience has been older and whiter than the area we live in. Increasingly, we'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 exist for that audience to identify our content with the creators and the establishment, and non merely have it exist as more entertainment or racket out on the internet. In the next couple of years, the role of mobile devices will only continue to shift how people curate their own experience and engage with artistic content. In radio, this presents an exciting AND daunting challenge in terms of our funding construction and station loyalty.

The challenges that digital applied science present

These arts organizations realize that with these benefits come drawbacks. While digital technologies accept led to the cosmos of ever-more dazzling tools and apps, many arts organizations worry about the long term issue on audiences, the field, and their very mission.

A number of respondents worry virtually meeting increased audition expectations:

People will have higher expectations for a live event. For audiences to invest the time and effort of going to a live performance, the piece of work they see will take to be more engaging and of higher quality. Events volition have to be more social and allow for greater participation and backside-the-scenes access. The effect spaces will have to be more beautiful, more than comfortable, more inviting and more accessible.

The audience has already moved from "arts attendance as an event" to "arts attendance as an experience." This desire for a full-range of positive experience from ticket purchase, to travel, to parking, to treatment at the space, to quality of performance, to exit – this will only increase over the side by side ten years.

The greatest touch of the cyberspace on independent publishers volition be audience expectations. Audiences will look everything to exist available digitally, and will require an engaging experience instead of a static one.

Some signal out the problem of coming together audience expectations on a express budget:

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

Others express business organisation that the effort to encounter audience expectations volition influence artistic choices, even entire art forms:

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

Live performance volition be diminished. Younger people don't want to show up at a specific time, specific identify for live performance — they want to download music at their own convenience. The ability of live performance is lost and the civic convening – the community building is lost.

Some arts organizations take recognized this change, and are doing their best to adapt:

I believe digital technologies are here to stay, and nosotros as an artform should embrace them and learn how to work alongside them. We provide scripts to those sitting in our tweetseats, and so they get the quotes right. We must work alongside or face alienating them.

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

We volition need to go much less tied to live, in person programming and certainly less ties to anchored seats in concert halls. Programming will demand to incorporate much more personal involvement by the consumers or they will not exist interested in engaging.

A number of respondents worried nearly audiences' decreasing attending spans, and the long-term touch on on the field:

Equally attending spans decrease, programming of longer works (e.g., Beethoven'south Symphony #nine) will become more problematic. Equally we move forward, nosotros may need to consider means to embrace the digital, connected world to better engage live audiences or run the risk of making alive music performances irrelevant.

The greatest impact could be the expansion of our audiences, but the worst impact is the attention span of the moment of interaction. I worry that information technology may shorten our artforms' performance times.

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

Basically, we are competing for the "entertainment slot" in people'southward schedules, and the more than entertainment they can get via HD Television receiver, Netflix, Video Games, etc., the less fourth dimension they accept for live performances, which also entails making an effort to get to the venue (as opposed to slumping on the burrow in front of the Hard disk screen). Also, movies, video games, etc., are both more user-friendly and cheaper than live performances.

Information technology has too blurred the lines betwixt a virtual and real experience:

As the realism of participatory digital entertainment (video games, etc.) and the immersion ability of non-participatory digital entertainment (3D movies, etc.) increases, it threatens the elements that make the live arts unique–the sense of immediacy, immersion, and personal interaction with the art. We've long hung fast to the conventionalities that there's zippo similar a live feel, only digital entertainment is getting closer and closer to replicating that experience, and live theatre will struggle to compete with the former's convenience and cost.

Some respondents addressed issues specific to their field or discipline. Flick and cinema organizations talk about the force per unit area they face up to preserve the "specialness" of the big screen when on-demand home viewing is already prevalent:

As a cinema approaching our fifth anniversary, nosotros take seen pregnant audience growth in spite of the fact that many of the films we play are existence released "mean solar day and date" 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, of import cultural feel. I can't emphasize the importance of the cyberspace and social media in our marketing efforts enough. It'southward most certainly a net positive value.

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

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

In the field of film production and distribution, more cyberspace and digital access will result in far fewer movie theaters, equally audiences have greater access in their homes to the medium. Already, as marketing dollars become more than limited for films, production companies are shortening the movie lifespan in a movie theater and moving them to digital and boob tube media sooner and sooner.

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

Literature and the volume 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 skilful and bad effects associated with these technologies. These days books are more hands attainable to a greater number of people however it is difficult for the book manufacture to produce a sustainable amount of income whether for individuals and for organizations. It is crucial that the public understand the importance of supporting nonprofit literary orgs, publishers, independent bookstores, libraries and other supporters of book culture and in plow it is crucial for foundations and government to provide this support.

All literary magazines are in peril right now, so if magazines such as ours proceed to exist information technology will be because of a paradigm shift in how literature is funded as an art grade in the U.South. I am loathe to believe that print publications will cease to exist because they are notwithstanding more than beautiful, simply all publishers will eventually have to create simultaneous digital and print editions, I imagine, which volition make the whole enterprise more expensive.

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

I believe that the more expensive arts producers ­– symphony orchestras, for instance – will find information technology more difficult to draw enough audience to go along in the aforementioned way they've operated for the past decades. Smaller groups volition find information technology easier to adapt because they're more flexible (they don't require a large stage and hall). I am very concerned about losing some of the greatest music ever written — symphonic music — for this reason.

Others pointed to innovative experiments — like the Metropolitan Opera'southward performances in movie theatres — as an instance of what big institutions with funding can do:

For opera, information technology has made it more attainable, by providing low-price performance circulate of Met performances. This has increased the potential audience for our live performances. It is our companies responsible to promote finer to those audiences. Overall I believe the upshot is positive.

Museums accept a unique perspective on applied science'south impact. It has greatly improved their cataloging efforts, but some worry that it will eventually reduce audience involvement in the "real thing":

It will radically shift the way in which we catalog and share information nigh collections; the museum as less the all knowing authority and more the conduit for rich institution-driven AND user-driven data. Information technology will likewise allow regional collections the ability to link to like collections worldwide – as such our local collections can be recontextualize and fabricated meaningful in ways non possible without linked information and semantic web technologies.

Digital technology and the resulting accessibility of information and images, while fostering accessibility of collections online, accept the negative impact of diluting the want of individuals to visit the museum to see works of art in person.

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

Digital technologies have essentially made it impossible for volume critics to support themselves in traditional ways; perhaps the next x years will bring the shift of book criticism to academic earth, where salaries are paid for teaching, and reviewing is a secondary activeness. 20-five years ago, working critics had full fourth dimension salaries from newspapers, magazines, other publications. Today there are only a handful of critics able to exercise this.

Our chief business organization for the literary arts is the increasing "validity" of self-publication among reviewers, readers, and writers. Online publishing and volume sales through Amazon (for example) contribute to this problem. If there are no gatekeepers, it will become even more than difficult to draw attention to works of genuinely loftier quality.

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

The demise of daily and weekly newspapers and the increasing fragmentation of traditional radio and tv media outlets combined with the increasing consolidation of media ownership due to revised FCC regulations has marginalized arts coverage and criticism to a indicate where it no longer plays a office in the larger civic chat. Hence, information technology is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve and engage 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 engage in their traditional function (i.eastward., back up the creation and presentation of art work) every bit well as build support structures to take the place of traditional media organizations.

Some responses addressed the hereafter of artists themselves. There is recognition that today's artists must also be entrepreneurs:

Digital technologies will level the playing field for all and old school, professional person artists volition be left backside. It is the appearance of the amateur. For those who are savvy and alee of the bend, there is money to be made if the content is strong. It means the consummate reversal of a contributed based model founded on single funding sources and moves toward an earned revenue model and oversupply sourced funding. At present more than always, artists need to exist entrepreneurs and not only artists. You can't survive at present equally an artist unless yous have a potent business model.

All the same others worried openly about how artists will brand a living equally traditional revenue streams shift or disappear:

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

Access will be skilful for educational purposes and to increment awareness of the arts specially historical material in performance of all types. Even so, issues of copyright and payment for that material, such as in apps and in streaming or downloading, are murky and difficult to navigate for artists themselves as to value and fairness of payments to the artist for original content.

There were besides some contemplative responses about the impact of technology on culture. One respondent pointed out that the ability to collaborate globally could lead to more than cultural homogeneity while another worried virtually the future of not-digitized art:

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

Materials we take that aren't available digitally will be lost from the human being record.

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

Attendance at live performances volition 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 it more than democratic and affordable. Audiences will expect the digital presence of institutions to be well maintained and curated.

Organizations will keep to need to adapt and contain digital technologies into their programming. This will exist a good thing for art consumers and patrons by increasing accessibility and improving collaboration. At the same time, organizations will struggle with funding to proceed up with engineering science. Funders and then rarely fund some of the infrastructure necessary to create top-notch digital programming, and that volition be a major struggle.

Survey results reveal that on a purely practical level, the net, digital technologies and social media are powerful tools, giving arts organizations new ways to promote events, appoint with audiences, attain new patrons, and extend the life and telescopic of their piece of work. "Nosotros can reach more patrons, more than often, for less money," said 1 respondent. "That's been a huge modify in the 30 years I've been in the business organisation."

But, technology has also disrupted much of the traditional fine art earth; it has changed audience expectations, put more pressure on arts organizations to participate actively in social media, and even undercut some arts groups' missions and revenue streams.

Across the practical, the internet and social media provide these arts organizations with wide cultural opportunities. Comments in this survey reveal an array of innovative ways 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 pause downwardly cultural and geographic barriers that, to this betoken, take made it difficult for some members of the public to participate. Their responses suggest that the majority of these arts organizations, with enough funding and foresight, are eager to use the new digitals tools to sustain and amplify their mission-driven work.