“I will survive”: Online streaming and the chart survival of music tracks

Daniel Kaimann*, Ilka Tanneberg, Joe Cox

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)
246 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Digital streaming has had a profound effect on the commercial music sector and now accounts for 80% of industry revenues in the United States. This study investigates the consumption of music on digital streaming platforms by analyzing the factors affecting the chart survival of individual music tracks. Our data are taken from the Spotify Global Top 200 between January 2017 and January 2020, containing observations on 3,007 unique tracks by 642 artists over 1,087 days. We identify a number of unique consumption traits applicable to online streaming services, which we use to explain variations in chart longevity. We find a positive association between the amount of time a track spends in the chart and the involvement of a major label. We also find that the level of competition from other chart entries, as well as some elements related to the pattern of diffusion, associates significantly with the likelihood of chart survival. The study highlights several important managerial implications for key industry stakeholders.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3-20
Number of pages18
JournalManagerial and Decision Economics
Volume42
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was partially supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the Collaborative Research Centre 901 “On‐The‐Fly Computing” under the project 160364472‐SFB901. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors. Managerial and Decision Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Research programs

  • ESHCC A&CS

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