Photo by me.
I gave up some years ago on trying to subscribe to SFS before you can roll your own subscription, because the pre-packaged subscriptions 1) never have everything I want 2) always have concerts I would pay to avoid.
This year, the first appalling fact I want to surface publicly is that the only subscription that has both of Esa-Pekka Salonen's concerts on it is the 24-concert package on Friday nights. There are 21 different packages, but it's not obvious to SFS marketing, or whoever designs the subscriptions, that people who aren't ready to pay for a 24-concert sub might be interested in seeing both programs by the orchestra's incoming music director.
Similarly, only two series offer both MTT's semi-staged Flying Dutchman and Antonio Pappano's Act 1 of Die Walküre. Because it's a well-known fact that there just aren't many Wagner fans in the Bay Area.
This is the problem with having subscriptions that are strictly day-of-the-week- and length-based rather than interest-based. If SF Performances and Cal Performances can offer subscriptions for Early Music, New Music, Dance, Chamber Music, Theater, Pianists, and Vocalists, why can't San Francisco Symphony offer some interest-based subscriptions??? There's a handy listing of season highlights by category....which someone developed for the web site...but there aren't subscriptions based on these categories.
Also, I'm ready to buy tickets to 16 concerts, but because they don't fall on a single subscription, I either have to buy two or three short subscriptions to get close to what I want, then swap a bunch of tickets.
One of the principles I've espoused, on my Web Site Basics page, is "Make it easy for people to give you money." Why isn't SFS ready to take my money now rather than in June??
And, because I like to offer free advice, here's how ticketing should work for an organization such as SFS, beyond the fixed subscription packages.
1. You see a page listing the concerts, repertory, performers, and the dates of those concerts.
2. You pick a concert date.
3. You see a new page on which you pick your seat. (This exists already for every theater that uses Tessitura with the pick-your-own-seat module. SFS is one of them.)
4. When you accept the seat, the flow loops back to 1.
5. You go through this flow until you have every ticket you want. You click Review.
6. You see a page listing the concerts, seats, and prices, and the total price of your order.
7. You delete any tickets you're having second thoughts about and click Check Out.
8. You pay, make a donation, pay for parking, etc. And you're done!
(Consider this advice not only to SFS, but to Tessitura.)
[Rant mode] I've been buying tickets to rock concerts since I was a teenager in the late 70's and would spend all Friday night after school > Saturday morning camping out at the Ticketron outlet at the Sears in North Hollywood. In those pre-digital days, it was the only way to get really good seats besides going directly to the venue box-office and doing that.
ReplyDeleteThe stuff you describe almost makes me nostalgic for those days. The subscription model is dead and while I know why orchestras and opera companies love it (= money up front), the maze that you describe only makes it worse. They tout choice but create packages of deadweight like you describe.
As for another of your pet peeves I share, the layout of so many symphony and opera company web pages is just awful. The link I posted for the St. Louis Symphony season in another thread is the way to go, but (for just one example) the LA Phil website abandoned that format and now has page after page of blocks of "Dudamel Conducts Viennese Classics!!!" things that they force you to click on (= clickbait) only to find out it's a *shudder* all-Brahms program.
To even get a PDF of the season schedule can be frustrating, because I'll often click on what I think is the schedule and it's a "Hello and welcome to our season! Here's the same Beethoven, Mozart and Tchaikovsky stuff we *know* you'll love!!!" summary. Then of course there's the German house specialities of only listing the premiere date in the summary for the particular opera or waiting until late May for a season that starts in September to put out the schedule. Yes, Oper Stuttgart, I'm looking at you.
To top that all off, the service, or to use their Orwell-speak version "Convenience Fees", are flat-out insulting. It's not uncommon for me to buy a ticket for, say, $50 and the out the door cost is $70 to $75 because of those fees. So......you've removed the human element because people can now get their tickets on their cellphones to scan, but you still charge those fees? Wow.
Yeah, agree with pretty much all of this. SIGH.
ReplyDeleteSFS is very flexible about exchanging tickets for subscribers, which is why I go ahead and get a subscription, turn in the ones I'd pay to avoid (mostly Mahler), and replace them with others.
ReplyDeleteThe outline you propose for buying do-it-yourself subscriptions would be hard to work in a system selling packaged subscriptions until after the packaged-subscription deadline has passed.