How to enrich your audience's experience before, during, and after your events
Today, most cultural music institutions offer outstanding programming. Yet in a saturated market, with shifting digital habits and mounting pressure on attendance, quality alone is no longer enough to ensure conversion or loyalty - especially among new audiences.
According to Substrakt’s 2025 Benchmarking Report, 31.6% of users now land directly on event pages, a sharp rise from 25% in 2023. These pages are no longer just informative add-ons — they’ve become a primary entry point in the audience relationship. Meanwhile, site visits have increased by +29% over the past year, suggesting a post-Covid resurgence in cultural interest.
In this context, music streaming should not be seen as a niche add-on but rather a strategic lever to enrich, extend, and enhance the artistic experience. It serves three key moments in an event’s life cycle:
- Before: to build desire, support discovery, inform, and drive ticket sales
- During: to engage the audience on-site or online
- After: to extend the emotional experience and foster loyalty
1. Enhance Your Event Pages: Turn Information into Experience
Today, concert or performance pages are strategic attention hubs, with more than one in three visitors landing directly on them. Optimizing these pages is no longer a “nice to have” - it’s central to the user journey.
And yet, many institutions still rely on a simple text description, perhaps a poster, and a “Book now” button. This legacy approach no longer matches how people engage online - especially on mobile devices, which now represent 69.5% of sessions and 53% of total revenue for cultural websites (Substrakt, 2025).
Music streaming introduces a more immersive and engaging format:
- Embed an interactive Web Player with audio excerpts directly on the event page
- Add an artist video or work presentation to give context
- Include a music quiz or anecdote to spark curiosity and interaction
Key benefits:
- Increased time spent on the page, leading to higher conversion
- Greater visibility of your programming: visitors hear what they’ll see
- Stronger perception of innovation and active engagement
By embedding an editorial Web Player on the Auditorium de Lyon’s website, click-throughs to ticketing rose by +40%, and listening data enabled better segmentation in digital campaigns. (See our full case study for details.)
2. Build a “Pre-Concert” Strategy: Fuel Anticipation and Support Learning
The lead-up to an event is a strategic moment that’s often underutilized. It’s when audience attention is at its peak - a crucial opportunity to influence their perception, deepen their understanding, and boost future engagement.
In a world of constant digital distractions, simply announcing a concert is no longer enough. What’s needed is a progressive, emotional, and educational journey around your programming.
Some proven digital tools you can activate:
- Send a thematic playlist or “audio preview” a few days before the event
- Share short-form content: video explainers, musical anecdotes, artist interviews
- Use CRM segmentation to tailor content by audience type (newcomers vs. aficionados)
Why it matters:
- Better preparation leads to a richer live experience and greater satisfaction
- Creates a personal connection with both the work and the institution
- Feeds your CRM with behavioral insights (listens, clicks, engagement)
This approach has proven results: according to Spotify, more than 50% of ticket purchases on their platform come from listeners who streamed the artist beforehand - especially via curated playlists.
Through the Student Pulse program (a joint initiative by 10 leading London orchestras and venues), adding playlists directly to ticketing interfaces led to 45% of students booking a ticket - and 36% of users who streamed also bought a ticket in the same session. (Full case study available.)
3. Create a Post-Concert Phase: Extend Emotion, Foster Loyalty
Traditionally, a concert “ends” when the curtain falls. But in a lifecycle-based audience strategy, the post-event moment is crucial: memories are still fresh, emotions are vivid - and it's the perfect time to reinforce the connection.
This is your chance to turn artistic content into lasting value: offer exclusive resources, create follow-up experiences, and encourage the audience to return - to your platform, your website, or your next concert.
Some content ideas:
- Provide a replay or highlight clip
- Curate a thematic collection related to the concert: similar works, related artists, comparative approaches
- Send a post-concert email with a playlist, a quiz, a podcast, or a “behind the scenes” video
This is also a prime opportunity to activate patrons or subscribers - post-concert exclusives are perceived as high-value benefits.
For AROP (the Paris Opera’s patrons association), Vialma built a private streaming platform with HD videos, curated playlists, podcasts, and articles (read the full case study here)
Results:
- 90% login rate among members
- Average session time: over 30 minutes
(See our case study for more.)
Toward a Continuous Programming Narrative
These three levers - enhancing event pages, building anticipation through streaming, and extending emotion post-concert - are not just tech features. They represent a structural shift in how we should think about cultural programming in the digital era.
In a landscape where mobile dominates usage (69.5% of sessions) but still lags in conversion compared to desktop (Substrakt, 2025), and where engagement depends as much on storytelling as on content, it’s time to design the artistic experience as a holistic journey: accessible, interactive, sustained, and measurable.
How Vialma Can Help
Our approach is built on a simple principle: digital doesn’t replace the artistic - it enhances it intelligently. We offer cultural institutions:
- Customizable Web Players embeddable on any site or ticketing page
- A full-featured streaming platform, white-labeled or co-branded
- An editorial catalog of over 4 million tracks, videos, and podcasts
- Data and segmentation tools to better understand your audience
- Strategic and editorial support at every step
Ready to turn your programming into a continuous experience?
Get in touch for a personalized demo and let’s explore how streaming can enrich your season’s perceived value.
