We Knew You Were Sheep

Think your music taste is based on free will and independent thought? Do you believe that the music the most people think is best becomes the best-known? I always suspected not, and a very clever study by researchers at Columbia delivers a blow to keepers of radio stations and charts who claim their bland playlists are the decree of an efficient marketplace.

Thousands of young people downloaded and ranked thousands of tracks by relatively unknown independent artists. One group ranked the music based solely on their opinion about it. Another group was able to see how popular the various songs and artists were already. In the peer-aware group, the songs rated the best by the independent group didn't become the most popular. Music became well-thought-of merely because it was well known.

An excerpt from a story in LiveScience:

Although different songs were hits in each world, popularity was still the deciding factor, although the "best" songs never did very badly and the "worst" songs never did very well.

So what drives participants to choose low-quality songs over high-quality ones?

"People are faced with too many options, in this case 48 songs. Since you can't listen to all of them, a natural shortcut is to listen to what other people are listening to," Salganik said. "I think that's what happens in the real world where there's a tremendous overload of songs."

Now this doesn't mean that tracking hits in the real world is evil, but it is imperfect. And I still believe that the musical marketplace would work better if radio programmers and record promoters were driven more by guts and instincts than obsessing over their vaunted "research."

CPH

Comments

[Amy Beth]

Craig: Interesting post. I've just found this site and your blog and I need to make my way through your archives.

I believe it is truly difficult to escape the influence of public opinion when it comes to music (well, most things actually). I don't listen to radio much. I listen to Gerry House in the mornings but mainly for the laughs not the music. I look at the charts regularly and though I'm curious on occasion to find out what the fuss is about a particular song ("Gold Digger" being the latest example) I don't think that I let it sway my music choices. Having said all of that, I am guilty of buying an album and checking out the reviews on Amazon or All Music and I let them influence my opinion even without realizing it.