Ed, I have great respect for the New World Symphony, America's Orchestral Academy. When www.nws.org gets its facelift, it will accurately boast the European nobility and other big backers who support it. It is an academy, not a career for most of its players.
Unfortunately, the local professional orchestra, the (second) Florida Philharmonic Orchestra, was permitted to plummet to its death to clear the way for the Cleveland Orchestra to save money by operating in South Florida.

The story dovetails with the national budget crisis because wealth has concentrated into the fewest hands since the financial bubble of the 1920's.
If we still had the multi-millionaires' 74% top marginal rate of income tax like under LBJ/Nixon/Ford/Carter, it would encourage write-offs like employees and business investments and charitable donations instead of gambling on real estate and on derivatives; the JFK rate of 90% created the Salvador Dali Museum of St. Petersburg, Florida among other benefits. George H.W. Bush called Reagan's tax cuts "voodoo economics" in 1980 and he was right. South Florida lost AM 940 WINZ's www.thomhartmann.com, so now only listeners to it or www.green960.com know these facts.

Combine this with the under-funding of the arts in school and with the correlation of orchestras with American industry, and it's less about MP3's and CD's and more about how orchestras were funded for the past century. We may have to state-sponsor them like Vienna, Austria does, as musicians compete less with other live acts and more with home theaters and high-quality recordings. The latter were unthinkable in the late 19th century unless you count sheet music or piano player rolls or gramophone cylinders.

Orchestras need to stay connected to their community and adopt new technology.

Here in Miami, we have a thriving orchestra, the New World Symphony. They're not afraid to add lighting or video effects to performances. They give the community free access by projecting live performances so that they can be viewed outdoors in the adjacent park.

They regularly have alternative events that mix electronica and DJs with chamber music.

The orchestra is active on Facebook and Youtube.

Much of the music was originally written to be performed in social settings, parties, etc. NWS recognizes that it should be fun to go to the symphony. You're often invited to eat, drink and dance and take pictures and videos during the performances.