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Next year, Proctors Collaborative and Troy Savings Bank Music Hall will migrate to a new, shared ticketing and patron platform. This will also impact several organizations that perform at these venues.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The change will go live for Proctors Theatre, Capital Repertory Theatre, Universal Preservation Hall\u00a0\u2014 the trio under the Proctors Collaborative umbrella\u00a0\u2014 Troy Music Hall, Albany Pro Musica, Schenectady-Saratoga Symphony Orchestra and Opera Saratoga on Jan. 12. They will operate on\u00a0Tessitura, a widely-used nonprofit arts management platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The consortium is switching from Arts Manager, which some participating venues had been using for nearly two decades, because another company,\u00a0Spektrix, recently bought Arts Manager, said Phillip Morris, CEO of Proctors. Under\u00a0Spektrix, the venues wouldn\u2019t have access to key services, such as auto-billing. Morris also worried the company would be at risk of another acquisition in the future, putting staff through the labor-intensive burden of switching platforms twice in a short period of time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
After extensive research for a\u00a0Spektrix alternative, Tessitura\u00a0emerged the winner for Proctors Collaborative and Troy Music Hall. Though\u00a0Tessitura is about 10 times more expensive than Arts Manager, Morris said, the partnership with Troy Music Hall made it financially feasible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The new Capital Region network of\u00a0Tessitura users is not dissimilar to the organizations’ arrangement under the Arts Manager platform, Morris said. Under that, venues and organizations operated as sublicensees of Arts Manager through Proctors Collaborative, many of which are migrating to this new system.\u00a0 If more arts and cultural groups want to sublicense Tessitura through this new Proctors and Troy Music Hall partnership, the opportunity is there, Morris said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Jon\u00a0Elbaum, executive director of Troy Music Hall, said the transfer should be \u201cpretty seamless\u201d for patrons. Current account holders will receive emailed instructions on how to activate their\u00a0Tessitura account, and any existing subscriptions, tickets and recurring donations will automatically transfer. Under Tessitura, patrons will use one login for all venues and organizations. Elbaum predicts the overall ease of the\u00a0new online interface will be a welcomed change.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201c(Arts Manager) is a pretty clunky platform, from a user experience, and it makes the process of buying tickets or donating or doing much of anything a little more burdensome than it really should be,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n