The arts organizations represented in the survey tend to agree with the notions that the internet and social media have "increased engagement" and made art a more than participatory experience, and that they have helped make "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

Even so at the same fourth dimension, 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 complimentary." Survey respondents were split regarding their opinions of whether technology had negatively impacted audition attention spans for live operation, merely 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, merely 35% of respondents concur with the statement that the internet has shifted arts organizations' focus towards marketing and promotion, and even fewer (22%) idea that the internet and its countless offerings are leading to a decrease in omnipresence at in-person events.

Predicting impacts of technology and social media

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

From a practical standpoint, many organizations country that applied science 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 than effectively through online advertising, web log presences, and social media exchanges. We have been able to decrease our budgets and increase revenue past utilizing online resource effectively.

It is as well profoundly facilitating their ability to book talent, and to know what to expect:

For arts programmers, the admission to high quality media to review artists in advance of assessing them alive has been a huge step forward. Spotify alone has made it so much easier to become a kickoff impression of an artist–no more than 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:

Final-infinitesimal ticket-buying and the trend away from traditional subscription packages volition probably keep, every bit the internet has freed people up from having to plan for most event attendance far in accelerate. This will bear upon the predictability of acquirement. On the positive side, social media has been a wonderful tool for word-of-rima oris marketing.

While it is impossible to know what cyberspace and digital technologies will exist like in 10 years, the trend of more data communicated more quickly to a more finely targeted audience with more immediate feedback from the recipient is likely to go along. Nosotros believe that this leads people to delay their decision-making about how they volition spend their leisure fourth dimension. For our field, this has generally meant a decline in subscriptions, a subtract in accelerate ticket sales, and an increase in concluding-minute box part sales.

Moving across the practical, one of the prevailing positive themes is that technology increases – and will go along to increase – access to the arts. In some cases, technology is simply seen as a way to improve marketing and advice to go more "butts in seats," simply many respondents noted its power to broaden and deepen the audience experience.

Technology is helping them introduce more audiences to art:

The digital globe is a very populist force, leveling the world between rich and poor, educated and uneducated. In our case, an organization with a proper noun like "Historical Order" has an invisible shield that bounces people who are below median income, do not hold college degrees, who hold bluish neckband jobs, who are a racial or cultural minority, off. The ubiquity of the computer, whether through your home auto, schoolhouse, or local library, means that all of those things that cause discomfort don't matter. That is a big bargain!

It has extended our visibility to many isolated individuals who may never accept heard almost our services, explored the artform, or who may have financial barriers to membership. We show to them every day what we do, rather than look them to find a printed annual report and program summary. Social media are concrete and immediate examples of our living community in activity.

Technology is besides helping arts organizations extend their touch, far beyond a ane-fourth dimension performance or event:

The net and digital media provide an amazing opportunity for arts organizations to extend the impact of the arts. A live performance can be complemented greatly by opportunities for further engagement and education, and the power to share information online maximizes our power to provide these opportunities at a more in-scale investment ratio. Nosotros tin can reach many more people with an article or video than with a 1-time lecture, for example.

We are able to provide artwork that dates back more than than 25 years to the communities nosotros have worked with over the years. For many, these archives represent the simply media history of their customs. The use 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 volition greatly amend accessibility to the arts field – from a monetary standpoint and from a logistical standpoint. People who live outside of urban areas will be able to experience performances that are somewhat limited to large urban areas. Arts organizations volition demand to reconsider the level/type of interaction with their audience.

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

The greatest bear upon will be the ability for non-profit organizations to share educational content and stimulating fine art and performances worldwide. Information technology volition also spark conversations betwixt diverse communities and assist individuals develop a greater understanding – and hopefully, a life-long appreciation for the arts.

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

Technology is making it possible to create customs 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 'Adjacent to Normal' could (and probably has) created communities to discuss and share resources on mental illness.

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

Standing the transition from passive to participation, from hierarchical to democratic, from traditional media to online media, from single art-grade to inter-disciplinary.

The possibility to greatly aggrandize and create a more diverse audience is very heady because traditionally our audience has been older and whiter than the surface area we live in. Increasingly, we're seeing some of our content getting traction in surprising nooks and crannies of the cyberspace – which definitely ways a shifting audition. The claiming volition be for that audition to identify our content with the creators and the establishment, and not but take it exist every bit more entertainment or noise out on the internet. In the next couple of years, the part of mobile devices will only continue to shift how people curate their ain experience and engage with artistic 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 up drawbacks. While digital technologies have led to the cosmos of ever-more dazzling tools and apps, many arts organizations worry about the long term effect on audiences, the field, and their very mission.

A number of respondents worry about coming together increased audience expectations:

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

The audition has already moved from "arts attendance equally an consequence" to "arts attendance as an experience." This desire for a full-range of positive experience from ticket purchase, to travel, to parking, to handling at the space, to quality of performance, to get out – this will simply increase over the adjacent 10 years.

The greatest affect of the internet on independent publishers will be audience expectations. Audiences will expect everything to be bachelor digitally, and will require an engaging experience instead of a static one.

Some point out the problem of coming together audience expectations on a limited upkeep:

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

Others express concern that the effort to meet audition expectations will influence artistic choices, even entire art forms:

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

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

Some arts organizations take recognized this modify, and are doing their all-time to arrange:

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

I believe that audiences will proceed to take shorter and shorter attending 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 effort to detect ways to incorporate that reality into our daily lives.

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

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

As attention spans decrease, programming of longer works (east.one thousand., Beethoven's Symphony #nine) will get more problematic. Equally we movement frontward, we may need to consider means to embrace the digital, continued world to better engage live audiences or run the take chances of making alive music performances irrelevant.

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

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

Basically, we are competing for the "amusement slot" in people's schedules, and the more amusement they can get via HD Boob tube, Netflix, Video Games, etc., the less time they take for live performances, which besides entails making an attempt to get to the venue (equally opposed to slumping on the burrow in front of the HD screen). Also, movies, video games, etc., are both more convenient and cheaper than live performances.

It has also blurred the lines between 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, information technology threatens the elements that brand the live arts unique–the sense of immediacy, immersion, and personal interaction with the art. Nosotros've long hung fast to the belief that there's nothing like a live feel, but digital entertainment is getting closer and closer to replicating that feel, and live theatre will struggle to compete with the former'due south convenience and price.

Some respondents addressed problems specific to their field or bailiwick. Film and cinema organizations talk well-nigh the pressure they face to preserve the "specialness" of the big screen when on-demand habitation viewing is already prevalent:

As a picture palace approaching our fifth ceremony, we have seen significant audition growth in spite of the fact that many of the films we play are being released "twenty-four hours and date" on-demand. 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 singular, important cultural experience. I tin can't emphasize the importance of the cyberspace and social media in our marketing efforts plenty. It'south most 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 be upgraded and/or changed every 3-5 years). Finding the acquirement for these digital systems is an enormous challenge and threat to our ongoing activities.

Others working in film worry that the quality and quantity of movies volition diminish:

In the field of film production and distribution, more than net and digital access volition result in far fewer movie theaters, as audiences have greater admission in their homes to the medium. Already, every bit marketing dollars become more than express for films, production companies are shortening the flick lifespan in a movie house and moving them to digital and television media sooner and sooner.

Organizations in the literary book 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 adept and bad effects associated with these technologies. These days books are more easily attainable to a greater number of people nonetheless information technology is difficult for the book manufacture to produce a sustainable amount of income whether for individuals and for organizations. Information technology 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 turn information technology is crucial for foundations and government to provide this back up.

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

Some respondents worry that these confusing technological and cultural forces will go far harder for some big scale artforms to survive:

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

Others pointed to innovative experiments — similar the Metropolitan Opera's performances in flick theatres — as an example of what big institutions with funding can practise:

For opera, information technology has made it more accessible, by providing low-toll performance broadcast 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 consequence is positive.

Museums accept a unique perspective on technology's bear on. It has greatly improved their cataloging efforts, but some worry that it will somewhen reduce audition interest in the "existent matter":

It will radically shift the mode in which nosotros catalog and share information nearly collections; the museum as less the all knowing authority and more the conduit for rich establishment-driven AND user-driven information. It volition also permit regional collections the ability to link to similar collections worldwide – as such our local collections can be recontextualize and made meaningful in ways non possible without linked information and semantic web technologies.

Digital technology and the resulting accessibility of data and images, while fostering accessibility of collections online, have the negative bear upon of diluting the desire of individuals to visit the museum to run across works of fine art in person.

A number of organizations mentioned the demise of trusted critics and filters, which has happened as impress media — especially local newspapers — take cut back on staff and struggled with decreased advertisement revenue as part of this digital transition. Without critics, they worry most how arts audiences will gauge quality:

Digital technologies have essentially made it impossible for book critics to support themselves in traditional ways; perchance the next 10 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 full time salaries from newspapers, magazines, other publications. Today there are only a handful of critics able to do this.

Our chief concern for the literary arts is the increasing "validity" of self-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 become even more hard 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 burden:

The demise of daily and weekly newspapers and the increasing fragmentation of traditional radio and television 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 civic chat. Hence, information technology is becoming increasingly difficult to attain and engage potential audience members and arts participants, and has shifted the entire burden (and costs) to arts organizations that are sick equipped and unprepared to both engage in their traditional role (i.e., support the creation and presentation of art work) besides as build support structures to take the place of traditional media organizations.

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

Digital technologies will level the playing field for all and old school, professional artists will be left backside. It is the advent of the amateur. For those who are savvy and ahead of the curve, at that place is coin 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 revenue model and crowd sourced funding. Now more than than always, artists need to exist entrepreneurs and not only artists. Y'all can't survive now as an artist unless you accept a potent business model.

Yet others worried openly nigh how artists will make a living every bit traditional revenue streams shift or disappear:

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

Access will be good for educational purposes and to increase awareness of the arts especially historical material in performance of all types. However, issues of copyright and payment for that material, such as in apps and in streaming or downloading, are murky and hard to navigate for artists themselves as to value and fairness of payments to the artist for original content.

There were also some contemplative responses almost the bear on of technology on culture. One respondent pointed out that the power to collaborate globally could lead to more cultural homogeneity while some other worried virtually the future of non-digitized art:

Digital technologies allows for students and artists all over the earth to exist inspired by i another. In some ways this is fantastic, in other ways, this breaks down the cultural differences that is so beautiful well-nigh having multiple countries involved in an art form.

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

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

Attendance at alive performances will favor more fervent fans and those with dispensable incomes who reside in cities, and the increased prevalence of simulcasts and livestreams will modify the viewing experience while besides making information technology more democratic and affordable. Audiences volition 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 volition be a good thing for art consumers and patrons by increasing accessibility and improving collaboration. At the same fourth dimension, organizations will struggle with funding to go on up with applied science. Funders so rarely fund some of the infrastructure necessary to create peak-notch digital programming, and that will be 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 ways to promote events, engage with audiences, reach new patrons, and extend the life and telescopic of their piece of work. "Nosotros can accomplish more patrons, more frequently, for less money," said 1 respondent. "That'south been a huge modify in the 30 years I've been in the concern."

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

Beyond the practical, the cyberspace and social media provide these arts organizations with broad cultural opportunities. Comments in this survey reveal an assortment of innovative ways that arts organizations are using technology to introduce new audiences to their work, expose more of their collections, provide deeper context effectually plays and exhibits, and intermission downwardly cultural and geographic barriers that, to this point, have fabricated it difficult for some members of the public to participate. Their responses suggest that the bulk of these arts organizations, with enough funding and foresight, are eager to employ the new digitals tools to sustain and dilate their mission-driven work.