How European International Niche-Music Festivals Reach and Attract Their Audience

The phenomenon researched in the current thesis is presented in Chapter 1, and in the broadest sense deals with the organization and the offering of international musical festivals as forms of special events in a cultural economics/ cultural tourism context. The interest and the focus of the current research falls especially on European festivals, which furthermore offer a specialized musical program associated with a niche-type of culture or an artifact. Chapter 2 presents the theoretical points of departure for this study and furthermore places the music festivals in the context of three economic theories, namely: Superstar Theory, Long Tail Theory and Central Place Theory in order to answer the main research question which is: “How European international niche-music festivals reach and attract their audience?”. Chapter 3 explains thoroughly the methodology used in this study which is a qualitative cross sectional and comparative in nature. Data has been extracted through personal interviews given by the managerial supply side of five European niche-music festivals which represent different type of sub cultures and has been put through the theoretical framework in order to test the explanatory power of the theories mentioned above. Analysis and results are discussed in Chapter 4, and in the last Chapter 5 all the relevant conclusions, the limitations and the suggestions for further research have been stated.