The Hipster Paradox in Electronic Dance Music: How Musicians Trade Mainstream Success off against Alternative Status

TL;DR

This paper investigates the paradox where electronic dance music artists seek mainstream success despite viewing it as illegitimate, revealing a trade-off between success and artistic autonomy through network analysis of digital traces.

Contribution

It introduces a sociologically grounded network analysis approach to understand success and autonomy trade-offs among EDM musicians using large digital trace datasets.

Findings

Musicians seek mainstream success early in their careers.

Artists embed in exclusive communities for autonomy.

A structural trade-off exists between success and artistic independence.

Abstract

The hipster paradox in Electronic Dance Music is the phenomenon that commercial success is collectively considered illegitimate while serious and aspiring professional musicians strive for it. We study this behavioral dilemma using digital traces of performing live and releasing music as they are stored in the \textit{Resident Advisor}, \textit{Juno Download}, and \textit{Discogs} databases from 2001-2018. We construct network snapshots following a formal sociological approach based on bipartite networks, and we use network positions to explain success in regression models of artistic careers. We find evidence for a structural trade-off among success and autonomy. Musicians in EDM embed into exclusive performance-based communities for autonomy but, in earlier career stages, seek the mainstream for commercial success. Our approach highlights how Computational Social Science can benefit from a close connection of data analysis and theory.