Publication Date:
2006-02-14
Description:
Hit songs, books, and movies are many times more successful than average, suggesting that "the best" alternatives are qualitatively different from "the rest"; yet experts routinely fail to predict which products will succeed. We investigated this paradox experimentally, by creating 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.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Salganik, Matthew J -- Dodds, Peter Sheridan -- Watts, Duncan J -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2006 Feb 10;311(5762):854-6.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Sociology, 413 Fayerweather Hall, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027, USA. mjs2105@columbia.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16469928" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
*Consumer Behavior
;
Culture
;
Forecasting
;
Humans
;
Internet
;
Interpersonal Relations
;
Music
;
Research Design
;
*Social Behavior
;
*Sociology/methods
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
