Kingdom or fandom? YouTube and the changing role of gatekeeping in digital cultural markets

How should novelty-driven entrepreneurs best position themselves in digital cultural markets? On platforms like YouTube, cultural entrepreneurs may bypass classic gatekeepers to reach novelty-seeking audiences through algorithms that search and recommend. However, this positive view of disintermediation ignores that novelty often needs curation by and consecration from professional audiences. We explore what these potentially conflicting dynamics imply for cultural entrepreneurs in the arena of YouTubers nominated for acclaimed Streamy Awards. Merging fine-grained datasets and qualitative evidence, we find that general audiences value novelty they grasp well, that professional audiences undervalue novelty they should easily spot, and that cross-audience spillovers prove negative. We discuss the implications of our results for theories toward markets serving fragmented audiences, cultural markets going online, and digital platforms.