Entropy and Popular Culture: Product Diversity in the Popular Music Recording Industry

How should cultural diversity be measured? An application using the French publishing industry

“…As for the question of the degree of proximity between titles, so far this has been only partially tackled by Basuroy and Ravid (2004) for films and by Hamlem (1994) and Alexander (1996) for music. 19 As far as we know, nothing else has been published on books.…”

“…The concept of diversity of cultural products was introduced, first, in order to establish the link between diversity and market concentration, especially in the music industry, following the pioneer work of Peterson and Berger (1975) (see, among others, Burnett 1992;Alexander 1994Alexander , 1996Lopes 1992;Dowd 2004). Some papers stress the concept through the consequences on product diversity of an industry's mode of financing (see, for example, on the television industry, Waterman 1990, or on the publishing industry, Gabszewicz et al 2002Gabszewicz et al , 2004.…”

“…The question of the measurement of diversity has been much more discussed with respect to the recording industry. For example, Peterson and Berger (1975) measure diversity in terms of the number of different songs in the top 10 of the hit parade over the period 1948-1954 in the United States, while Alexander (1996) evaluates diversity in terms of the dissimilarity between the scores 2 of songs in the top 10 over the period 1955-1987. According to this author, the measurement of diversity proposed by Peterson and Berger is deceptive ''because the hit charts can have many songs of a similar product type, or conversely, they may have a small number of more disparate products (i.e., fewer hits but greater product diversity)'' (p. 172).…”

Oppositional Identities and Resource Partitioning: Distillery Ownership in Scotch Whisky, 1826–2009

“…It does so by generating homogeneity in product offerings, which in turn gives opportunities to new specialists emphasizing authenticity and variety in styles of offerings Organizational diversity affects product offerings. In music recording and brewing, product diversity declined with increasing industry consolidation and generalist dominance Berger 1975 1996;Alexander 1996;Carroll and Swaminathan 2000). An identity-based explanation for resource partitioning suggests that matching offerings to emerging or changing audience needs occurs through the arrival of new organizations that introduce offerings that reflect emerging identities.…”

Innovation and Production Networks in Regional Music Scenes

“…Another body of work explores the relationship between diversity, innovation, and popular music. Studying data sources for product diversity such as Billboard charts, these studies trace how changes in the music industry led to alternating periods of growth and decline with respect to diversity in Top-40 or Top-100 charts (Peterson and Berger 1975;Lopes 1992;Alexander 1996). In using Billboard charts as data sources, these studies are focusing on the products that have reached the pinnacle of the music industry production chain.…”