The Art of Being a Gatekeeper: A Qualitative Study on Decision-making Processes of Music Bookers and Curators in the Danish Festival Industry

Abstract

This study, rooted in the research philosophy of critical realism, explores the influential role of music festival bookers, curators, and scouts as cultural intermediaries within the live music sector of the Danish music industry. This study focuses on non-profit festivals with interests in booking up-coming and emerging artists and utilises an abductive reasoning approach for analysis.
The research process involved conducting semi-structured interviews, which shed light on the complex, intuition-driven decision-making process in the high-velocity environment of music booking. This process combines individual and organizational decision-making strategies, such as bounded rationality, incremental decision-making process, and the Garbage Can Model.
The findings reveal that music bookers rely on a combination of personal taste, experience, network influences, and data analysis in their artist booking decisions. Although these decisions are not usually formalized in a strategic plan, they are informed by factors like the artist's live performance skills, musical genre, regional origin, and gender representation, social media following, airplay-time, and streaming numbers. The study also reveals how the booking of an artist at one festival can catalyse a chain reaction influencing other festivals' booking decisions.
The study also reveals how an artist’s journey from playing small stages to larger stages is a widely accepted success metric among music bookers, and the industry's belief in some music bookers having the 'good ears' needed to identify the next big artist. Nevertheless, the study also finds that some artists are booked for their unique musical expression and potential to intrigue and challenge a festival audience, and the music bookers' dedication to promoting a broad range of talent beyond those suggested by commercial stakeholders such as booking agents.