Platforms, Promotion, and Product Discovery: Evidence from Spotify Playlists

13.03.2019 14:15 – 27.03.2019 15:45

INSTITUTE OF ECONOMICS AND ECONOMETRICS SEMINAR / ABSTRACT

Digitization has vastly increased the amount of new music produced and, because of streaming, has raised the number of songs available directly to consumers. While enhanced availability has levelled the playing field between already-prominent and new artists, creators may now be highly dependent on platform decisions about which songs and artist to promote. With Spotify emerging as a major interactive music streaming platform, this paper explores the effect of Spotify's playlists inclusion decisions on both the promotion of songs and the discovery of music by new artists. We employ four empirical strategies for measuring the impact of playlists on song success. First, we examine songs' streaming volumes before and after their addition to, and removal from, major global playlists. Second, we compare streaming volumes for songs just on, and just off, algorithmic top 50 playlists. Third, we make use of cross-country differences in inclusion on New Music Friday lists, using song fixed effects, to explain differences in streaming. Fourth, we develop an instrumental variables approach to explaining cross-country New Music Friday rank differentials based on home bias. We find large and significant effects: being added to Today's Top Hits, a list with 18.5 million followers during the sample period, raises streams by almost 20 million and is worth roughly $77,000. Inclusion on New Music Friday lists substantially raises the probability of song success, including for new artists.

Lieu

Bâtiment: Uni Mail

Boulevard du Pont-d'Arve 40
1205 Geneva

Room M 3250, 3rd floor

Organisé par

Faculté d'économie et de management
Institute of Economics and Econometrics

Intervenant-e-s

Luis AGUIAR, Economist and Research Fellow in the Digital Economy Unit of the European Commission's Joint Research Center in Seville, Spain

entrée libre

Classement

Catégorie: Séminaire

Plus d'infos

www.unige.ch/gsem/en/research/seminars/iee/

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