Information Spillovers in the Market for Recorded Music
44 Pages Posted: 1 Jun 2006 Last revised: 26 Dec 2022
Date Written: May 2006
Abstract
This paper studies the role of consumer learning in the demand for recorded music by examining the impact of an artist's new album on sales of past and future albums. Using detailed album sales data for a sample of 355 artists, we show that the release of a new album increases sales of old albums, and the increase is substantial and permanent—especially if the new release is a hit. Various patterns in the data suggest the source of the spillover is information: a new release causes some uninformed consumers to learn about their preferences for the artist's past albums. These information spillovers suggest that the high concentration of success across artists may partly result from a lack of information, and they have significant implications for investment and the structure of contracts between artists and record labels.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
From Niches to Riches: Anatomy of the Long Tail
By Erik Brynjolfsson, Yu Jeffrey Hu, ...
-
By Erik Brynjolfsson, Yu Jeffrey Hu, ...
-
Blockbuster Culture's Next Rise or Fall: The Impact of Recommender Systems on Sales Diversity
By Daniel M. Fleder and Kartik Hosanagar
-
How Does Popularity Information Affect Choices? A Field Experiment
-
Global Village or Cyberbalkans: Modeling and Measuring the Integration of Electronic Communities
-
Recommendation Networks and the Long Tail of Electronic Commerce
-
Electronic Companion: How Does Popularity Information Affect Choices? A Field Experiment
-
Designing Sales Contests: Does the Prize Structure Matter?
By Noah Lim, Michael Ahearne, ...
-
The State of Network Organization: A Survey in Three Frameworks
-
The Gestalt in Graphs: Prediction Using Economic Networks
By Vasant Dhar, Gal Oestreicher-singer, ...