A balancing act of atypicality and conventionality in music.

Keywords
No Thumbnail Available
Issue Date
2021-08-26
Language
en
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
A critical assumption in the recombinant innovation literature is that there is a positive linear relationship between recombination and impact. In theory, the concept of recombination is applicable in a wide variety of contexts. In practice, however, most studies investigate patent inventions by businesses. This study challenges the assumption of linearity and studies recombination in a novel context, the music industry. A large data set of songs (N=17,008) is constructed using Python libraries which connect to last.fm and Spotify, two online music platforms. Recombination, the independent variable, is operationalised based on the genre recombination of songs. Impact, the dependent variable, is measured using the total number of streams and listeners, as well as with the popularity metric by Spotify. Results show strong evidence of a nonlinear, U-shaped relationship between recombination and impact. Low recombination is associated with medium impact, intermediate recombination with low impact and high recombination with high impact. In addition, the effect is strongly moderated by permeability, a novel measure capturing the strength of the group identity belonging to a genre. These findings have important theoretical and methodological implications for the recombinant innovation literature.
Description
Citation
Supervisor
Faculty
Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen