Pop sector on the scientific tour

He likes to work with people from the pop sector, who are now well acquainted with the Rotterdam Popular Music Studies research group. This allows him to contribute to solving social issues, for example by helping organisations in the industry to become more diverse and inclusive, and by developing a calculation tool that allows pop musicians to be rewarded more fairly.

What fascinates you about pop music?

'By talking about music, you can often make an immediate connection with someone. For example, when you find out that you both listen to the same music or have been to a certain concert, it creates a bond. Sometimes it seems like a shortcut to determine what kind of person you’re talking to. If, on a first date, you tell your date you really like The Cure and the other person has never heard of it, that says something about them. I haven't researched that, by the way, but it seems like an interesting topic.'

How would you describe your research?

'I like to work with partners in the field. When we organised a conference in 2014, I involved people from the pop sector for the first time. There was a somewhat mixed reaction to that at the time: 'Why should we as a pop sector engage in this kind of lackademic research?’, someone wrote. That has now really changed, the sector is now very open to collaboration and increasingly sees the importance of research. The most obvious explanation is that people working in the sector, unlike 20 or 25 years ago, are themselves theoretically educated and can thus better see the importance of research. Personally, I find it super fun to do because it allows me to contribute something to solving social issues. In recent years, I've done that mostly in the area of diversity and inclusion, and lately it's been shifting to economic inequality as well.'

Do you have an example of that? 

'We're working on the Fair Pop Pilot right now. Musicians are underpaid for a variety of reasons. That's historically true and one of the biggest challenges in the creative industry. To rectify that, we recently developed the Fair Pay Calculator Tool Pop Musicians, which gives pop musicians and their clients insight into what constitutes fair pay and helps them negotiate appropriate compensation. We will explore the experiences with that tool and also look at how fair pay affects the operations of venues and the professional practice of pop musicians. How does it feel to be paid fairly, do musicians experience loss of autonomy or does it actually give them more self-esteem, what impact could fair pay have on their careers? We previously researched a pilot with a basic income at and financed by the festival Into The Great Wide Open. There wasn’t actually a research budget for that, but we went for it anyway because basic income is a hot topic and also very interesting scientifically.'

You've done a lot in the area of diversity and inclusion. What has that yielded?

'I see impact mainly in long-term collaboration. For example, we work with Keychange, an international network that works hard for gender equality in the pop industry. Together with organisations, they make concrete agreements and set targets on how to deal with diversity and inclusion, for example at festivals. Last year, we did an evaluation of their programme and it became clear that those agreements were not being monitored. Therefore, monitoring plays an important role in a new programme and we are going to help them with that as well.'

At your appointment as professor in 2021, you said you wanted to position EUR as one of the leading centres for the sociological study of popular music. By the sound of it, that's working out quite well?

'Certainly, in terms of pop music research, we are the leading player in the Netherlands. We are the only one focusing on society, the public and the industry. That we do well has everything to do with our top core team and our talented PhDs. We are often asked to comment by the media. Sometimes that results in great pieces, like recently in FD about the Oasis reunion, and sometimes you politely say ‘no’ to an interview inquiry. For example, I was once asked if I could explain why Rammstein is so successful. But as a scientist, you can hardly make statements about this because you have no comparative material. When I explained that, the response was 'Then I'll just ask Leo Blokhuis'.'

With which project were you able to have a real impact? 

'Several years ago, the Rotterdam Council for Arts & Culture (RRKC), which unfortunately no longer exists, launched a multi-year project on diversity and inclusion in which we were involved from the beginning. For us, this was a standard study with the fairly obvious outcome that making staffing more diverse was the biggest problem. But this led to a snowball effect where research and policy was being conducted on this in multiple places. With the power of empirical evidence, we are also likely to change the way we think about payment in the Fair Pop Pilot. I'm proud that they came to us and so we've really built a name for ourselves.'