It’s not often that the music business and academic thesis writing coincide. Q Prime was founded by 2 people with academic backgrounds. Over the years, though, we have accumulated several academic papers on music and the music business. They don’t all make “light” reading but each is interesting in its own way.
A Little History
Cliff Burnstein was in the middle of finishing his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania when he accepted a role in the finance department of Mercury Records. Needless to say, as music is Cliff’s first love (actually maybe tied with the love of numbers as well), Cliff became what is known in academic circles as an ABD – “All but Dissertation” in Statistics.
Some years late, Peter Mensch finished his Master’s Thesis at the University of Chicago. Unlike Cliff, Peter used graduate school as a way to both stay out of the music business job market (there were no good jobs when he finished his BA) and pump his resume by writing a thesis which would attempt to prove the Radio Airplay sold records (which it did and still does to a lesser extent). However, it turns out that Peter could not really prove it academically. He still got his Masters.
20 years after Q Prime started, Peter got a tip on an up and coming possible music business recruit, Jesse Browner Hamlin. The tip mainly consisted of a very proud friend of JBH’s mother telling Peter that he should hire this kid based on his Honors Thesis from Hamilton College on Drumming & Drum Crafting within different spiritual traditions. Needless to say, Jesse has become a key executive here at Q Prime.
Finally, the most recent QP artist signing is London based The Last Dinner Party. TLDP consists of 5 very talented musicians who play a multitude of instruments as well as being very accomplished vocalists. One of them. Lizzie Mayland, plays guitar and flute, sings and writes. It turns out that like Peter and Jesse before, Lizzie also delved into music for their thesis. They took lessons, performed with the Leeds Youth Opera and graduated with a degree from Goldsmiths University in London.
We thought you web site deep divers might appreciate the path some of our co-workers and musicians took to get here so we have included all 3 theses on our website. Enjoy!