| 3
LSO teams creating and using digital media: Marketing, LSO Discovery and LSO Live |
2
core locations supported: LSO St Luke’s and the Barbican |
2023
Christmas NAS drive failure crystallized the business risk |
2028/29
Barbican performing spaces close for one season, raising the stakes on digital engagement |
Overview
The London Symphony Orchestra needed a more robust way to protect, manage and reuse the growing volume of digital media created across its organization. Content was being produced by multiple teams, stored across NAS drives and cloud environments, and becoming increasingly difficult to search, govern and access across locations.
Base Media Cloud helped LSO move towards a more centralized, fully supported media asset management (MAM) environment, giving staff greater confidence in the media back catalog and creating a stronger foundation for commercial licensing, short-form content creation, education and future digital audience engagement.
“We wouldn’t have been able to use the tools and push them out to our staff team without the support of Base. You’re constantly upgrading and iterating the platform – if we were just standalone, we wouldn’t have got as far as we have.”
Becky Lees, Director of LSO Live, London Symphony Orchestra
Challenge
LSO’s digital media output grew rapidly, particularly as concerts, marketing and education content moved online. Three teams create and store content: Marketing, LSO Discovery (education and outreach) and LSO Live, the orchestra’s record label and in-house media producer. As LSO’s Digital Archivist, Victoria Conner put it, the organization had produced a huge quantity of material “rapid fire” without the controls to match.
- Disjointed storage and duplication: Assets were spread across NAS drives and cloud storage. LSO identified duplicated files and cloud costs that the Director of LSO Live, Becky Lees, described as becoming “astronomical”.
- Business risk: A NAS drive failure over Christmas 2023 exposed how much valuable content was unprotected – a clear business-risk trigger for change.
- Multi-site access: A solution was needed that could work agnostically across LSO St Luke’s (education and rehearsal) and the Barbican (main concert base).
- Search and ownership: A backlog of material sat on servers, shared drives, old hard drives and USB sticks, with no single owner and no easy way to search, filter or engage with it.
- Rising strategic value: LSO Live content is sold to broadcasters and video-on-demand services, while Marketing and LSO Discovery reuse media for audience engagement, social content and education – raising the cost of getting media management wrong.
“We’d made this massive mess. We had so much media – media we can leverage in future – but right now it just wasn’t serving anyone. It was sitting in a big pile, with no ownership, jeopardizing both that content and any future content we make.”
Victoria Conner, Digital Archivist, London Symphony Orchestra
Solution
Base Media Cloud provided a fully supported MAM environment with cloud storage, active and deep storage workflows, staff onboarding, usage reporting and ongoing account management. For LSO, the value was not simply the technology, but the combination of platform, hands-on adoption support and continuous improvement. The project was also supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies through its Digital Accelerator Programme, which funded LSO’s Digital Archivist role. This dedicated resource helped lead the audit, organization and migration of media assets, establishing the governance and workflows needed to maximise the value of the new platform
- A centralized media environment: Staff work from a shared media back catalog rather than dispersed drives and inconsistent folder structures.
- Supported adoption: Base delivered staff training, one-to-one sessions and repeatable onboarding as roles changed and new team members joined – not a one-off handover.
- Account management and reporting: Regular reports help LSO see how staff engage with the platform and how active and deep storage are used, so processes can be refined over time.
- Sub-clipping capability: Introduced after go-live through regular catch-ups, sub-clipping lets staff work from sections of larger files instead of downloading huge assets – ideal for reactive social and short-form content.
- A platform for future strategy: The MAM underpins LSO’s longer-term ambitions, including a potential video-on-demand service for patrons and friends.
“I found it really helpful to have the whole team on the case helping me out. It’s a huge amount to learn – having the team available to answer my questions and give me that one-to-one training time was a big, fundamental thing that was super helpful.”
Victoria Conner, Digital Archivist, London Symphony Orchestra
Result
The clearest outcomes so far are operational confidence, broader use of the back catalog, sharper commercial responsiveness and a practical foundation for future audience engagement.
- Multi-site access is a “game changer”: Staff across both sites now use the media back catalog with the confidence to find digital files.
- Richer content for audiences: Easier discovery means teams can repurpose more of the catalog across audiences, social channels and education.
- Commercial responsiveness: LSO Live can react more efficiently to licensing requests, supporting the orchestra’s revenue-generating activity.
- More agile short-form workflows: Sub-clipping reduces the need to download full-size files, saving time and resource across teams.
- A foundation for growth: LSO plans to grow what it describes as its leading UK-orchestra YouTube following, and to sustain audience engagement during the Barbican’s 2028/29 one-season closure.
“Having a solution that works multi-site has been a game changer for us. Our staff now have the confidence to find digital files and use our back catalog – it’s enriching the content we push out to audiences, and we’re more efficient reacting to licenses on the LSO Live side too.”
Becky Lees, Director of LSO Live, London Symphony Orchestra
At a glance
| Metric / signal | What it means for LSO |
| 3 teams unified | Marketing, LSO Discovery and LSO Live now draw on one supported media environment. |
| 2 sites supported | LSO St Luke’s and the Barbican are served by a single, venue-agnostic MAM. |
| Christmas 2023 | A NAS failure was the trigger that moved digital media from “nice to have” to business-critical. |
| Weeks of 1:1 onboarding | Hands-on training helped the Digital Archivist master the platform before rolling it out internally. |
| Sub-clipping adopted | A capability added post-go-live, now used across teams for faster social and short-form output. |
| Largest UK-orchestra YouTube following (LSO-stated) | LSO’s own claim; the goal is to grow subscribers further using a richer, more dynamic video catalog. |
| 2028/29 Barbican closure | One season without the main concert venue increases reliance on digital media and engagement. |
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Photo thumbnail credit: Matthew Johnson
