About CultureTicks

I wanted to be a professional violinist. The arts make me feel completely alive. But while I was studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London, I kept having the same experience: wait, who just performed at the Barbican? I can't believe I missed that. Great events were constantly happening but they lived scattered across individual venue websites, and unless you already knew where and when to look, you missed them. As I reflected on this, I realized that this issue doesn't just exist in London, or New York, or Seattle where I'm from. This is a consistent problem across the arts world, and it's hugely detrimental to its thriving.

This issue doesn't exist in other genres of music because the problem is different. The arts are almost exclusively nonprofit, which means that the business models that work so well for large platforms to promote more mainstream art don't work the same here. Having a platform like Ticketmaster come in and implement dynamic pricing and massive service fees on a Bach concert feels weird and wrong. And they would have no incentive to promote those concerts widely on their platform. They aren't the most broadly appealing events, and have limited financial upside. That's where a dedicated arts platform comes in, and why CultureTicks was created.

CultureTicks is trying to solve two problems: a discovery and awareness problem for audiences, and a marketing problem for venues. On discovery and awareness, I came up with two solutions. The first is simple: an aggregated platform that lists events just like any other site. A SeatGeek, a Ticketmaster, anyone else. They are the best at providing a convenient experience for fans and I wanted to do the same thing for arts fans. The second was harnessing the dormant potential of arts creators and organizations. They are chronically underfunded and don't have as many partnership opportunities as more mainstream creators and organizations, but they have highly motivated potential audiences for the arts. The CultureTicks Partner Program lets them tap into that potential by letting their audiences know that when they attend arts events, they're supporting that organization at the same time, just by entering their code at checkout.

On the venue side, I want to help arts venues reach new audiences through marketing channels that are only available to aggregated platforms like CultureTicks. Our goal is to provide tickets at the lowest cost to our audiences and allow them to emotionally connect their attendance with the organizations and creators that make them interested in the arts in the first place. In order to do this, we're working to partner directly with arts venues to bring their primary ticket supply to new audiences that we direct through new and innovative channels.

All of it comes back to one mission: increase awareness and attendance to the arts through modern ticketing solutions.