A balancing act of atypicality and conventionality in music.
Keywords
No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Issue Date
2021-08-26
Language
en
Document type
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Title
ISSN
Volume
Issue
Startpage
Endpage
DOI
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