#001: Set Lists & The Infinite Expectations Of Audiences
Or how going to see some bands made me think about 'experience levers'
Hey, I’m Ian Ravenscroft of Green Raven. Welcome to the very first Innovate Creatively. I’m always thinking about how and why things are to apply across XR and creative media. And now I want to share those thoughts in concise bursts that can spark new ideas and connections. I’d love you to come along for the ride…
So, I went to see some bands.
I love gigs. I don’t get to go very often these days. But live music has always been part of my life. I used to review gigs and have seen loads, so when the right gig comes along now, I make sure it counts.
This year I’ve seen The Smile, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, and Weezer – which is enough 90s nostalgia for most. And since attending those shows I’ve had some feelings about how audiences engage with cultural content, and how expectations are everything.
So let’s break it down…
An Audience Is A Thousand Different Expectations
Whether you are in a crowd of 200 people or 20,000, every audience member comes with their own expectations. And that has all the bearing in the world on how people feel when they leave.
In a random selection of any four audience members at a gig, you might get:
Someone who has been to 9 shows and has a tattoo of the lead singer on their face
Someone who intensely loved the first album but hasn’t listened to a thing since
Someone who has heard the name and knows they are meant to be popular
Someone who is there with their girlfriend and has no idea what is going on.
So what does it mean? Audiences are complex. They may be in the same room, on the same day, having bought the same tickets, but it does not mean they are there for the same experience.
Can you cater for everyone’s individual needs? No. Can you control their expectation? Mostly no. Can you cater for diverse audiences? Yes, most likely.
The Set List As The Experience Lever
What makes or breaks a gig for most audience members, whether they realise it or not, is the set list. Why? Because it is one of the few mechanisms available to a touring band to serve their varied audiences.
Most of the crowd will be on board with live music as a concept. They don’t need convincing they like the genre of music. They are hoping to have a night out. They want to make memories. But they will have different reactions to different songs, runs of songs, and eras of a band based on their expectations.
So the set list becomes an ‘experience lever’. It’s the variable that can make someone’s experience better or worse depending on those expectations.
When bands choose a set list, they are considering multiple factors – the venue, the country, commercial pressures, current popularity, rehearsal readiness, the arena size, and so on. But one of the main considerations will be how will the content of our time on stage make the audience feel?
Will it please older fans with deeper cuts. Will it win over lapsed fans with new material? Will it introduce fresh fans to a whole new sound? Two hours of B Sides will please someone immensely, but likely not everyone.
So how does this apply to creative projects?
My question, is what is your set list? What’s the thing you can control that changes the experience of your audience or customers? What is, as I’m coining it, your ‘experience lever’?
For a museum, it might be the curation of collections. Do you open the show with the mega hit dinosaur fossil? Or do you pull out some deeper cuts from the archives? How do you design your creative cultural set list to leave people satisfied and coming back for more?
For a creative project, it might be how do we onboard people with different levels of experience? What level of knowledge do we require for this to be satisfying? Who ultimately is this for?
How can we think like a band?
I’m thinking a lot about Setlist.fm, which is a crowdsourced website that catalogues set lists from concerts around the world. A fascinating feature is that for any given band it can provide statistics on how frequently they play certain songs, what their average setlist is across different years, and where in the world they tour.
What this shows me is how set lists vary between shows. For example a festival set is a different audience to a headline tour show. So the set changes. It also shows me how scarcity is created by not playing certain material, so when it does the reaction is much bigger. And it also shows me how you can use openers, closers, and encores to please those different audience segments in different ways.
There is an art to it, but also a science. Only by being aware of your content as a continuum, can you start to use it to change people’s experiences.
And that in a nutshell is why it is useful to think about for all creative projects. Identifying a demographic isn’t enough. You need to design flexible levers that can be pulled to serve different subsets of audiences in different contexts. Bands do it naturally. Other creative outlets could learn from it.
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