Master Culture Economics and Entrepreneurship alumni Boris Gunst won the price for best master thesis on Popular Music, awarded by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) with his thesis ‘The Audience as Gatekeeper’. His supervisor was dr. Christian Handke.
Boris' thesis investigates to what extent pre-release attention for techno songs in online communities can predict post-release success of songs on Spotify and Beatport. It shows that online communities enable the audience to collectively value songs before release. In this way, their practice is similar to the practice of gatekeepers and this may have implications for the organization and structure of the music industry. In short, it enables artists to directly interact with large audiences online and may decrease dependency on traditional gatekeepers in the music industry.
Boris Gunst wrote a blog about his master thesis.
The IASPM Benelux and the Vereniging Nederlandse Pop Podia and Festivals (VNPF) awards the Bachelors and Masters Popular Music Thesis Prize every year. This prize honors outstanding research by students (active in a Dutch university) writing about popular music. The prize is to award the best-researched and best-written BA and MA thesis on some subject related to popular music.