Network structure of phonographic market with characteristic similarities between musicians

TL;DR

This study uses social network analysis to explore the relationships between top-selling artists and listener perceptions, revealing a complex market structure with limited correlation to perceived artist similarities.

Contribution

It introduces a network-based approach to analyze the phonographic market and compares sales, popularity, and expert opinion networks, highlighting market turbulence.

Findings

Sale and popularity networks do not significantly correlate with similarity networks.

Market structure is complex and influenced by non-laminar, turbulent phenomena.

Listener perceptions of artist relationships are not directly reflected in sales or popularity data.

Abstract

We investigate relations between best selling artists in last decade on phonographic market and from perspective of listeners by using the Social Network Analyzes. Starting network is obtained from the matrix of correlations between the world's best selling artists by considering the synchronous time evolution of weekly record sales. This method reveals the structure of phonographic market, but we claim that it has no impact on people who see relationship between artists and music genres. We compare 'sale' (based on correlation of record sales) or 'popularity' (based on data mining of the record charts) networks with 'similarity' (obtained mainly from survey within music experts opinion) and find no significant relations. We postulate that non-laminar phenomena on this specific market introduce turbulence to how people view relations of artists.