How to monetize streaming performances for new and alternate revenue streams for your arts organization well beyond the pandemic. In a world where many arts organization have struggled to make money with streaming and digital content, or stopped streaming altogether, here’s one organization still streaming and making lots of money from it—and growing their audience, too.

Learn more about Dallas Black Dance Theatre.

Drew's article for the Wallace Foundation: Can Pandemic Be Catalyst for New Global Arts Ecology?

I'll leave it at, if you like this podcast, I think you'll be pretty excited by this project with this milestone crossed. I gotta say, these last few weeks were pretty filled with the hustle, you know what I mean? Which normally I don't mind it so much. This time. I caught a cold, which I've been fighting all week and I've been putting off doing this recording, so I don't know if that's doing anything to my audio right now, but you know, it was go time.

So here I am and we carry on. Right. So normally I don't mind the hustle so much. Work hard, play hard is normally my mo. Some call it work-life balance. But more and more I believe in work-life integration. For me at least I can speak for myself. And I guess what I mean by that is just really embracing the benefits of remote work, flexible work, knowing, appreciating, acknowledging that there are ebbs and flows.

I think that's why I don't mind the hustle because I know that there's sometimes that it really is pedal to the metal. And our work. And then there are times where we get to take a beat and then sometimes life makes you take a beat, like when you get a cold and you can't go as fast as you want in a given week.

So I try more and more to carve out time for those breaks to really make myself take a break sometimes go outta town, block off time on the calendar if I have to. So anyways, just sharing a little bit about how I try to be intentional on that. I am not the best example, but always working on it. Progress, not perfection.

Right. All right onto today's agenda. People ask me all the time, Aubrey, what organization is doing things right? If you have followed me for almost any amount of time. You know, I am known for championing, doing business differently in the arts than how it's always been done. And so the honest answer to that question of what organization is doing things right, is that in an industry that can be very entrenched, can be slow to adapt.

The answer is, I didn't always have an answer to that question until big, giant asterisks, caveat here until I discovered the organization that we are hearing from today and their leader who we're hearing from today. That leader is Z Drew, the company is Dallas Black Dance Theater, and the topic we're talking about is alternate revenue streams.

I think pretty much every organization I come into contact with these days wants new revenue, alternate revenue, additional revenue streams, right? And Z Drew in Dallas. Black Dance Theater really are a case study to behold, in my opinion, a case study to learn from and to emulate. So in terms of how the narrative is changing here, this question.

Really came to the forefront during the pandemic when we could not make money the way we always had. In other words, ticket sales from our live in-person performances were not an option for us. So this question of how do we produce alternate revenue streams came to the fore. I first came across Zanatta Drew during pandemic lockdown, there was a Wallace Foundation article that she had authored called Can the Pandemic Be a Catalyst for a New Global Arts Ecology?

Could the pandemic be a catalyst for a new global arts ecology? And I was just so drawn to her thinking on that. I had been doing a lot of talks on that theme myself during that time, and I think she just framed it so well, and it was just really like a beacon of light that I realized there was somebody else out there wanting to leverage this difficult moment in time, not rest on their laurels and catapulting their organization forward because of it.

And she believed this could be true for the entire industry. It was just this moment of Aubrey, you're not crazy. I'm not crazy, I'm not alone, but I have to say her work is not just about during the pandemic, a year and a half later, fast forward, I heard her speak on a panel. At this point, this was in person conferences had just barely started again, and I remember I got out the laptop and started taking notes.

I just was so struck and was like hanging on every word and just had this moment of, Aubrey, you need to be writing this down. So if you like making money, get out the pen, get out the laptop, whatever your note taking vehicle of choices, because I'm telling you, I just think she has so much wisdom to share.

And everything she says is not just about the pandemic. Here we are, you know, years later now and she's crushing it. I don't know how else to say it. I think they really are still a case study to behold and emulate. So get ready to take notes. We'll pick it up with Zeta in just a minute.

Hey everyone. I'm Aubrey Bergauer and welcome to my podcast. If we haven't met, I'm known in the arts world for being customer centric, data obsessed, and for growing revenue. The arts are my vehicle to make the change I wanna see in this world, like creating places of belonging, pursuing gender and racial equality.

Developing high performing teams and leaders and leveraging technology to elevate our work. In this season, I'm bringing you conversations with some of my favorite experts from both inside and outside the arts, all to help build the vibrant future we know is possible for our institutions and for ourselves as offstage administrators and leaders.

You are listening to the offstage mic.

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In terms of audience numbers, they've grown from around 20,000 to 150,000 or more annually. They now do touring as well. Touring to 31 states in the US and abroad, and 15 countries. We're gonna come back to touring and the cool things they've done with that in our conversation, and all of those numbers, all pre pandemic.

I mentioned before her article for the Wallace Foundation talked about how there is opportunity amidst the crisis to continue to grow. Our brands use the disruption to our advantage, and that is exactly what they have done at that institution. So, you know, I take inspiration from what works and often that's outside the arts.

But today we get to hear from an executive leader and organization within the arts that's doing some incredible work and getting results.

And with that, Let's get to it, Z. My first question for you is, you have said that audience development has slowed to a near halt. Can you please talk about this? What do you mean by that? I've heard you say it a couple different times. Go for it.

Steadily for all genres. We don't know the reasons. We don't have any silver bullet to try to turn around the audience decline, but we do know that audience tastes are changing. There's competition with commercial and many other reasons that we can suspect, but what we have not had as any widespread way to actually change that dynamic.

And so when the pandemic hit, that to me, opened the eyes of how we might look differently as an opportunity for growing our audiences. But I think the thing that we really have to embrace is the fact that what we've been doing for the past 30 years has not been working as effectively as we would've liked for it to.

And the decline will be to our detriment if we don't change directions at this point. Having now suffered complete closures and now trying to redefine

And we were talking about using streaming not as a goal and and of itself, but as a way to drive engagement with our in-person product. And during that session, it led to a discussion around streaming educational content in particular and. I do believe where it's hard to scale lots of professional musicians and pay for that educational content is a little different in some ways in terms of paying for it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. My question in all of this, there are several questions, but you've done all of the above, any kind of streaming content, educational, performance based, I mean, you've done it all. So first question specifically on this is you spoke about not charging on use. But charging on access, those were the words I wrote down that you had said.

And can you explain what that means and, and how that played out at Dallas Black Dance Theater?

And so the model that we came up with is we do charge four actual number of views in certain instances, but when you have large numbers of people that you're giving access to, for instance, school districts, corporations, at that point, we don't know how many people are actually going to view. And the end result, but we are creating a level of access, and so in doing our contracts with our artists and all of our royalty obligations, we realized that the greater opportunity was to charge for access for say, 25,000 or more.

If you want an example that we can talk about, one is. Independent school district. We partnered with them to offer student matinee programs. It was a groundbreaking partnership of which we offered our educational content to. All 150,000 students, all grades, all schools, 230 schools. Had we been doing in person, we'd have been able to do less than 5,000 students.

We actually ended up with 62% of the 230 schools accessing the content and the virtual streaming, and we ended up with more than 25,000 students getting introduced to our programming, uh, just last month. So that particular model was built on access because we knew that when we opened the choreography up.

And all of the licensing, we had to have some quantity that we could verify, and so that model was built on access. I can tell you another, uh, one was we did a a R P. We've done corporations and we've done individuals and corporations like Verizon. They've created an app for our February Black History Month programming, put it on their, our program, on their app to sell our tickets.

Virtually 30 million plus persons. And so that was a different type of product offering simply because we would be paid by the number of views that people actually had a special code that they could come in and buy. When it comes to individuals that we sell to, when we're just promoting the performances to our own patrons, we do sell it by the number of views and we have pricing that is based on the product that we're offering.

For instance, we didn't offer full performances two hours of content. We offered 30 minutes, so it may be one work. Mm-hmm. And so that way we were able to price it very differently than if we did. Our Espresso Nutcracker, which was a full production. There is a variety of ways that you can build a financial model to be able to put your product out there, but you have to look at who you're offering it to.

We've had hospitals. Who have come in and asked for product that they could actually have. And you know, here's the thing. Nutcracker in children's hospitals at Christmas, unfortunately there're gonna be children there every Christmas. On the corporate partnership side, we had one company who came in and wanted to ha buy for their international customers.

And so this was a way that they could buy virtual content, support our organization, and then have that product offering for their international customers. We have packaged it every way that we would've packaged in-person performances for revenue. And so when we look at that touring, I'm, I'm just, I'm, I'm going down the list here.

Oh, go please. Yeah. Uh, we very early on found that performing arts centers did not have product. Because they brought in product to put on stage, and so they still needed to keep their patrons and their audiences. And so what we did is offered them content that they paid for and then they streamed it to their audiences for whatever price or for free.

But we got paid and we didn't have to tour. Now we can physically tour. And have virtual touring going at the same time in cities that we will never travel to. So those are just some of the examples that we've been able to utilize. But when we wanna summarize dollars, and I happen to be an accountant, so I love the money side.

By training, that's what I'm always looking for, is how can we, uh, fund the arts? We talk about arts have value. But most times we think giving it away is going to generate the resources we need, and so we're always looking at making sure that the artists are paid and how we can grow the earned revenue opportunities for the organization.

Having done that this first year, last year, we did all virtual season 19 productions and we were able, as small as we are, to net over six figures after all expenses

And I think the one thing that I have seen from many of my peers is a real concern about going back into the theaters when they opened up. And was this going to divert your local audience? Uh, in person? What we found is it's actually grown it. And so we've got new persons who are showing up in the theater because they saw us virtually, and that was based on one of the theories that was put in that article about how sports has grown their audiences, starting with the Dallas Cowboys and being a Texan.

Suddenly you found that every community had a little league team. Everybody including all of the wives and uh, young ladies have learned the sport. We've learned the game, and you created all these new entrants into, into. Having interest in actually showing up in the stadium. So 20 years later, every team was building new stadiums.

Why? Because they used the digital format to be able to grow exponentially. The number of people who had access to the games, who could actually learn the game and then have an interest when they were in a certain city to go to a stadium, we have the same opportunity to do the same thing in the arts.

It's to create interest in communities that have no arts, live arts or professional arts or facilities. And when they come to where we are located, then we will, I believe, have to build larger theaters because we would generate new interests now. What does that back up to? The fact that we had no civil bullet for the past 30 years to expand the number of people who could learn about our art and get access to our art.

And the pandemic opened the door for us to now reach hundreds of thousands and millions of new entrance for every genre of the arts.

I was quoting an NYU professor, Scott Galloway, and he talks about, you know, you stream Fleabag on Amazon, therefore you wanna buy your next toaster on Amazon. And that's what you're saying of like, That means for us as arts organizations, I literally say this, anybody who took my comeback planning sprint, I said this.

That means for people watching our content online, when they come to our city, if they're not local, they're interested in what we're offering over other entertainment options available. And if they're local, it means that. They either enjoy us on the couch streaming at home or when they get off the couch, then that is also a a top of mind entertainment option.

So I love everything you're saying. It's playing out in real time for you there. I also love the sports analogy. I think there is so much we can learn from what sports are doing, even on very different scale and budgets and love or hate. The N F L. Everything you said is factually correct and their audience has grown tremendously, so I just, oh my gosh, I just eat this up.

Okay, so questions specifically, going back to packaging all of this every which way that you all have done this is very tactical, but are you, are you saying to whether it's a corporate sponsor or the school district there, are you saying like, for X thousands of views it costs you y dollars? Is that how you're packaging this?

So what I have is a sliding. Scale that goes all the way up to over a hundred thousand, that if you want this level of access, then you pay this amount. And that is for corporations, that's for hospitals, that's for community, or I mean any group at a certain number of views. That's the pricing. And then when you look at other types of pricing for corporations that are buying, say for.

500 employees and they want to buy four different programs, which some of them have and bought a hundred tickets, and they just selected from the menu of our season and paid the full price individually that we were charging anywhere from 25 to $55 per view. That's what they've done because they looked at the programming and decided that's the content they wanted to offer to certain groups of employees.

So good.

Exercise for these companies and that shift has, we all know anybody working in development knows it's been harder and harder to fundraise from corporations, but you've really flipped the script and have been able to monetize streaming in this way you just described for corporations. And I, I just, I don't know, it's just, it's brilliant.

So questions to follow up on that are, Are these corporations you had existing relationships with? Are you out there pitching? Are they coming to you? All of the above, if you don't mind sharing. Oh

Okay. But they reached out and they were part of the genesis when we were looking in the nineties to do distance learning. Their predecessor, GTE had invested $700,000 in us doing the study of how we could expand our educational programming. So that was the platform that when the pandemic hit, we were ready to move to pay digital distribution.

However, they reached out to us with a variety of things that they wanted to do, and this is not philanthropic. This is really coming out of buying product. You know, they're not asking to be seen as a corporate sponsor. They're asking to be seen. And so with a A R P footprint, and we've had out-of-state entities of A A R P reach out to us before our Texas.

For our product, for programming, and so what we're saying is that there are so many communities and opportunities to get your product displayed. What we did is worked very strategically on who are the folks who are most likely to. Be susceptible to marketing for, uh, virtual seniors, mature audiences who now are challenged to go into the theaters, to have a provider who they trust bring them content.

Because we were not the only content that A A R P put forth to their, they created a program, a series of programs that they offered. Wow. We're just looking at how we target, because as we said, hospitals, now you're looking at. Families and people that you were trying to help keep them and connected. This was an opportunity hospital.

C e o reached out to us about it, and so as we look at the schools, school districts now around the nation are talking about how they can do matinee programming because they understand we have the curriculum to go with it. But at the same time, there are students that can actually get bused, get into a facility, the time on the teachers, all of that travel time.

They can create educational programs and awareness for so many more students than they can now, we are not saying don't have in-person performances or activities. What we're saying is that there's an opportunity, just like with football, if you've never been in a professional stadium, you still had all the joys of the game.

So we say that you've learned the sport. So there are people who can appreciate the arts and may never step into a facility. And if you monetize that, we, the arts benefit, look at P B S. Yeah, largest digital art and no one resists the arts on pbs. So why is there such resistance? And that's the question I had.

Why is there such resistance to digitized viewing of the art? Yeah, because it's the premier station. That we go to. But I think we as the arts, uh, leaders have been less risk taking in thinking about having virtual and digitized, uh, distribution simply because the default has been outreach. And when we look at outreach, even though we've done tons of it over the years, collectively, and I have sat on numerous arts organization boards, large and small, that outreach has not turned into paid attendees.

Yes,

Grown adults buying tickets. We know that, again, decades of decades of seeing this play out is telling us that. Two, the other big point that I wanna underscore for everybody is, What you've done that's so impressive to me is typically our education model is funded by foundations. You and I were just having a conversation offline about foundations and everybody who's worked with granting organizations knows it can be challenging, and we're trying to design a project that fits the criteria and we love those grants.

Absolutely. But what you've done is said, no, no, no, no, no. We're not funding our education programs this way. Or not to say that you said, no, we're not. But an additional funding, maybe I should say, is the revenue that's come from the way you've been able to monetize it and this idea of monetizing education.

It is a good, it's a service. I think it's brilliant. So I just want everybody to understand it really. Changes the model from how we've traditionally done it. And even with

So I think the thing is, is that what you have to do is have an investment of value. And that is where you educate students and everyone else that there is value attached with what you're receiving because you see individuals from all economic backgrounds invest in sports gear and all other types of entertainment because they desire to have it.

We're trying to, in our minds, that dos like dance sitter is create desire. So that people will want our product, and once some investment of value is made, then the tendency is that we are now bringing along those new audiences are now becoming donors. And I can say that some of them have been not small donors.

So it's very exciting to see people out of state that we don't have a clue, but they saw the performances, loved it, and we've not even had to solicit them. I've not even had to solicit

Their parents have been more resistant to the virtual simply because they're burnout with the having to do school activities and learning online, and so that enrollment has declined the older students. 10 and above, uh, we've been able to bring them along into those parents who wanted to have that virtual option.

So we did not have the level of interest and participation that we had hoped because the younger students are the ones that we thought would be more engaged. But what we are looking at now that in person is returning, there are opportunities as gas prices increase. Driving, all of those things, open the door for parents to have an option.

So we do believe because the schools are open again, that we will be able to grow the alternative sources of revenue for our academy. Many of our students don't live in Dallas, they live in suburbs and. Many are also outta state. We've even had a six year old academy student in Philadelphia and one in Los Angeles who's taking academy classes.

So what we're seeing is that the numbers may be small now, but we do see the opportunity to grow over time. Yeah. Proof

of

For everything that we're doing, we're doing both. We are touring. We have two performing companies, and they have both been on tour out of state, I think in the last two weekends consecutively. At the same time, we're also providing content to performance venues who are looking for content that they want to stream for their customers or their patrons.

So at this point, we are not using one against the other. This is not a dual revenue stream ongoing, so our dancers may be. In Maryland, but our streaming may be in Montana. So the whole thing is that we don't have to physically go to places because now all of the venues have the, uh, technology capabilities.

They're now comfortable with streaming, and so they're often a variety of products to their patrons, and we're trying to make sure that we're in that.

That's my whole brand. That is clearly your whole brand. It's the theme of this whole series. So with that prompt, please say more. Go.

I don't believe it's a short term fix, but I do believe that we can expand our diversity, equity, inclusion, and access initiatives at a lower cost by using. The streaming and the virtual. We also can grow audiences, not just in our local community, and we can grow audiences that we never suspected we would have.

So I'm looking at this, that this is the new model. It's the silver bullet we've been waiting on. To help more people learn about the arts, have access to the arts, get excited about the arts, and actually experiment with different disciplines of the arts that they would not have actually invested in, in person, but we're now finding they're doing virtually outside of the traditional arts that they may have experienced.

So overall, I would like to think that in 20 years, we as an industry would have a stronger revenue stream and that we would have opportunities to have live concerts as well as every opportunity for every individual in this country to have an arts access on their device, whatever they choose. Think we owe it now to ourselves and to everyone because their arts are for everyone and we need to make it available and

We can win. Wow. I, there is nothing more I can add to that. I just, I wanna say thank you. I love your positivity. I'm so grateful for the way you are doing it, doing these things that so many of us as an industry have talked about and you're successfully executing this strategy. Um, Everybody. Dallas Black Dance Theater is a case study in using online content and engagement as a strategy.

We talked about strategy for access, strategy to drive in-person attendance, a strategy for touring. It's brilliant and it's lucrative. So one more time. If you like making money, then this is somebody we should be paying attention to. And with that one more time. Thank you, Zeta. Have a wonderful day.

Hey, off Stagers. One of the top things I hear from individuals all over, something people are increasingly wanting is people who say, I want more connection with like-minded colleagues. If that resonates, I created a new community and you're invited to join. It's an online gathering place for arts and culture professionals wanting a different, stronger paradigm for the industry.

It's a place for those not satisfied with the status quo for arts and culture who believe there is a better way forward, and that the future of the field doesn't have to be all doom and gloom. It's a place of people trying to navigate the ins and outs of careers in the arts and want smart growth mindset type people alongside them.

It's a place called the changing the narrative community. I'm so excited by the folks who've already joined, and no matter your artistic discipline, geographic location, role, or years in the field, You are welcome and invited as well. Visit aubrey Bergauer dot com slash community. The narrative is changing, and I hope to see you there soon.

That's all for today, folks. Thanks so much for listening and keep up with more content like this by following me on LinkedIn or Instagram at Aubrey Bergauer. Definitely hit that follow button to subscribe to this podcast, and if you like what you heard here, Will you consider leaving a review or rating?

I'd be so grateful for your help and support in that. Thanks again. See you next time on the Offstage Mic. The Offstage Mic was produced by me, Aubrey Bergauer, and edited by Novo Music, a studio of all women, audio engineers and musicians. The narrative is changing for arts and culture, and I'm so glad you're here to be a part of it.

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