Going Digital: Online Performances and Ticketing

I would like to know thoughts on how to handle this via Tessitura as well.  Thanks!

We ended up having to cancel a show mid-run, but had footage we were able to use to make it available online. I know that we used Vimeo which allowed us to include a paywall, while also sending "comp" links to people who had sponsored the show. In terms of integration to Tess, I'm not sure, but I'm happy to ask. We're also not a presenting organization, though I know we still had to work with AEA to share the digital performance.

We did a similar thing as Colleen, we followed the rules that Equity's been giving to theaters and were able to get our running show online for a limited time. 

Our Equity restrictions were:

Every patron had to have a unique password to the video so they couldn't just share a link.

Video had to be taken down 2 weeks after the show was scheduled to end.

We couldn't sell more additional "tickets" than we had available seats left in the original house. So, if the show were still running and we had the capacity to sell, say, 1000 more seats, we were able to sell 1000 views of the video.

We worked with Made Media to build a custom path on our website that was integrated with Tessitura. Patrons had to log into our website using the same login as when they're buying tickets to access the video, so they each had their own unique passwords.

Anyone who had a ticket to a cancelled performance got a special constituency on their account that allowed them to watch the video once they logged in. We also sold "tickets" to a new  GA performance that we called "[show name] streaming video", and patrons could buy those tickets on our website just as they would for a regular show. They got the link to the video on the "thank you" page at the end. This way, we were able to restrict the number of people who watched in Tessitura just like we do with normal productions.

When a patron logged in, the website looked for either the constituency on their account or a ticket to the video in their ticket history, and if they had either of those on their account they were able to watch the video. If they didn't, they got a prompt to pay for the video.

If a patron tried to access the video link without either the constituency or a ticket in their history, the website prompted them to pay for the video.

Our Box Office associates had to become tech support specialists for a few days to help people reset their long-forgotten passwords, but all in all it worked pretty well!

We just began doing this here at SFJAZZ. We're streaming a select concert from our archives every Friday at 5pm (we're calling it Fridays at Five). We're already on a Membership model, as opposed to a Subscription model, so we already have controls in place on our website to allow member-only access to basically any page we choose (members-only events, presales, etc). We built a new membership type, Digital Membership, and locked the URL for the stream behind the member wall. All current Members have access, plus anyone with the new Digital Membership. This is working great as far as it goes (and initial results, after the first full month, are pretty good). Customers are having the usual login issues/etc, but most people are quite happy with it so far. We're using YouTube hosting for the actual streaming.

As for Analytics and integration with Tessitura, of course, that's a different beast. The only integration with Tessitura is on the Membership side, and as the data guy, I'm being asked if there's any way to integrate the Google Analytics and YouTube Analytics figures with actual Tessitura data, and of course there really isn't. I'm still lookiing into things (and if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them!), so if I find anything I'll try to update anyone interested, but right now the streaming/viewing numbers are basically locked away in their own universe.

Not performances but we offer a membership model for our Dance Classes that we deliver via Zoom.  You can also Pay as you go.  It's had great take up.  We email the link up to the class on the day of and sales are through the MindBody platform that we use.  The only integrations with Tessitura is that monthly (ish) we upload the new patrons and their mindbody ids into Tess for marketing and a bit of crossover Analytics

I know that Tessitura is working at a furious pace on gated content at the moment.

Royal New Zealand Ballet spoke at ANZTRUC Virtual about their recent broadcast on FB Live and mentioned trouble with scammers.  It might be worth having a chat to them about their experience.

Thank you to everyone who has responded thus far, this information has been very insightful! 

Thanks so much! Who are you using to host the video? Is it live or pre-recorded? Have you had any issues with bandwidth?

Thanks, Justin! Are your member pages part of TNEW or are they custom built on your website? We don't have any membership models in place but this could be an interesting use for one! Also, if you are using YouTube, are you able to restrict the stream? Have you noticed any issues with Bandwidth?  

Thanks, Heath! I will have to look into Royal New Zealand's experience. 

Did you use MindyBody before all of this started? Is it for streaming or signups only? Was there a specific reason you chose to not use Tessitura for ticket sales? Have you noticed any bandwidth issues with Zoom? 

We use mind body for our dance classes. Alot of ballet and dance orgs use it because of its flexibility (pardon the pun). It's bull for gyms. Tessitura can't do the multi genre and multi pack offerings although resource scheduling is getting there. For performances and Philanthropy it's tessitura all the way. 

Zooms good so far. When we scale up more we might hit the 100 limit. 

Did you maintain the same price point for the video as you did for the original performance?  

We used Vimeo to host the video, and we recorded it with 3 cameras on the night of the last live performance when we knew we were going to close. It took about a week to edit the video together and add captions by hand, so it was a pretty time intensive project, but it definitely paid for itself - we sold out the video run. Never had any issues with bandwidth or buffering, as far as I'm aware, except for one patron who had a really slow internet connection. I think she had problems with most streaming video regardless of the platform, so she wasn't mad at us, just wanted to know if we could help.

Our price point was significantly lower for the video than for the live show ticket. From what I heard from the Box Office, we didn't seem to get complaints from the patrons who paid the higher price for the live show, mainly because we were very careful in our messaging to them. We segmented them out when we announced that the video was for sale and gave them different messaging every time we mentioned it.

We switched from TNEW to a fully custom site (we used Adage) a couple years ago because TNEW couldn't handle the traffic during our onsales. That took years of convincing, as you can imagine. I don't know all the technical details at the moment, but I'd be happy to check in with the folks who set it up if you have further questions. What I do know is that we're only streaming the concerts through YouTube, not making them available for re-viewing. We just have a page on our site (www.sfjazz.org/watch) that we're restricting to Members only, with the new Digital Members counting for the purposes of that page (though not for some other ones). We embed the YouTube player there with the stream. Because YouTube is hosting, no bandwidth issues so far despite this last Friday's concert spiking our site traffic at its highest point ever (literally). I will say, though, that this whole setup is provisional. It may or may not be the solution going forward, but it has limitations (Tessitura integration and resulting analytical blindspots being among the biggest), and we're looking into other options now that we're near the end of the scrambling-to-get-it-up phase.

Hi all!

We are thinking about how we can collect some patron data relating to some of our free digital content. We aren't necessarily requiring registration in advance or putting in place any kind of need for an access code - the content will be free and open to the public, but we still want to know who is engaging with this content and relate that back into Tessitura so that we can talk to these folks later. 

We are using Prospect2 and we were thinking of creating a sign-up form just for this event/video and then having it automatically tag the patron who signed up. With the form you can also have an email generated immediately using an automation (the email could have the custom link to your video or a password). This way you could then track patrons who are signing up and collect new contact info too.