New Study Says Music Quality Doesn’t Determine Popularity

Take heart music marketers. An extensive Columbia University study proves that when it comes to music, hype matters more that quality.  The study published in Science Magazine shows that when it comes to people’s perceptions of what is a good song; most of us just follow the crowd.

14,000 participants chose from 48 songs by unknown bands posted on the web. When info about how many others had downloaded a song was prominently displayed, participants suddenly claimed the more popular songs were better quality.

“It turns out that when you let people know what other people think, the popular things become more popular,” said Columbia sociology professor Duncan Watts told Red Herring magazine. “But at the same time, it becomes harder to predict what will be popular.”

The researchers say they beleive that their work disproves the theory first popularized in the best seller "The Tipping Point" that certain individuals are tastemakers and their opinions lead to hits.  “Everything is created equal; there’s nothing special about these people,” Mr. Watts said. Instead, the more people pay attention to others the more random popularity becomes.

"Research firm Gartner said in a report last November that consumer-to-consumer taste-sharing applications, such as user playlists, were having an increasing effect on music sales. The firm predicted 25 percent of online music store transactions would be driven by taste-sharing by 2010,"

writes Red Herring.

"Gartner suggested these recommendations would assist sales of what Wired editor Chris Anderson calls the long tail: niche content that isn’t often sold in physical retail stores but is easily made available in the unlimited stockrooms of digital marketplaces."

But the authors of this new study disagree. “Peer recommendation systems will have the effect of increasing unpredictability…They could also have the effect of concentrating attention on the superstars even more.”

Perhaps a new study that provides both tastemaker opinions and download numbers side by side is needed to determine which theory is correct.  But we suspect that everyine is right. Consumers are fickle. Music quality is impossible to measure.  And if we could figure out in advance what people would like then we’d be rich…or Clive Davis….or both.