How Popularity Affects Popularity in Music

(Posted by Andrew Merkin)

The article below tested a couple of factors in the creation of "hit" songs in the music industry. It goes along with the power law discussion from Thursday's class.

The authors create an artificial ‘‘music market’’ in which 14,341 participants downloaded previously unknown songs either with or without knowledge of previous participants’ choices. Increasing the strength of social influence increased both inequality and unpredictability of success. Success was also only partly determined by quality: The best songs rarely did poorly, and the worst rarely did well, but any other result was possible.

The article is available through the Dewey library site.

Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market

Salganik et al. Science 10 February 2006: 854-856 DOI: 10.1126/science.1121066

What if we only interacted with people like ourselves?

(Posted by Jessica Russell)

The Economist ran an article last year looking at the way people were picking neighborhoods that were a "better match" for their personalities. It discusses wider implications of these changes, particularly as it relates to politics. I thought it fit in well with the final slide of today's lecture.

How to Define 'Hits' and 'Niches'

Sheila Seles sent me the following link, which describes a new working paper by a Wharton professor and grad student.

They modify the methodology that we discussed in class today by having the set of "hit" and "niche" products change as the number of SKUs increases. Specifically, they define "niche" in percentage terms (e.g. the bottom x% of all SKUs) and find that when Netflix added a lot SKUs, the share of sales for "niche" products decreased.

The authors argue that this contradicts the "Long Tail" story. Chris Anderson says that it doesn't make sense to define "niche" in percentage terms and that the paper is flawed.

What do you think?