Duncan Watts on Increasing Returns in Entertain Ment consumption (might other markets be different?). In our artificial market, therefore, social influence played as large a role in determining the market share of successful songs as differences in quality. It's a simple result to state, but it has a surprisingly deep consequence. Because the long-run success of a song depends so sensitively on the decisions of a few early-arriving individuals, whose choices are subsequently amplified and eventually locked in by the cumulative-advantage process, and because the particular individuals who play this important role are chosen randomly and may make different decisions from one moment to the next, the resulting unpredictably is inherent to the nature of the market. In his test the "early-arriving individuals" were random/blind, but is that true in the Real World? Certainly the blogging AList has been skewed toward Early Adoptor-s, though that's diluted over time.

His focus is really on understanding why "experts" have a hard time predicting hits (Cool Hunt).

But it certainly reinforces the practice of PayOla, Gaming The System.

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