ABSTRACT

What causes turnover on the Billboard charts? The neutral model of cultural evolution, which assumes that taste is transmitted via an unbiased copying process, provides precise predictions regarding expected popularity distributions and turnover within a popularity-ranked list. Recent advances in this line make it possible to characterize the likelihood of music taste transmission mechanisms by investigating departures of observed turnover rates from neutral model predictions. Here, I bias the neutral model to investigate four alternative conceptions of individual music taste transmission (song quality, individual status, social network, and anticonformist) and use agent-based simulations to examine the impact on turnover. I then compare modeled with empirical turnover data from the Billboard Hot 100 over the period from 1958 to 2021 and find that observed turnover patterns are reproduced only in an anticonformist model simulating the systematic rejection of the most popular songs. This finding was unexpected and challenges the notion of a generalized “preference for the popular.” Overall, this study contributes to ongoing debates regarding the mechanisms involved in the transmission of taste and the mechanics of fashion change.

摘要

是什么导致广告牌排行榜上的营业额？文化进化的中性模型假设品味是通过无偏见的复制过程传播的，它提供了关于人气排名列表中预期人气分布和营业额的精确预测。这方面的最新进展使得通过调查观察到的周转率与中性模型预测的偏差来表征音乐品味传播机制的可能性成为可能。在这里，我偏向中性模型来研究个人音乐品味传播的四种替代概念（歌曲质量、个人地位、社交网络和反墨守成规者），并使用基于代理的模拟来检查对营业额的影响。然后，我将模型与 1958 年至 2021 年期间 Billboard Hot 100 的实证营业额数据进行比较，发现观察到的营业额模式仅在模拟系统拒绝最流行歌曲的反墨守成规模型中重现。这一发现是出乎意料的，并且挑战了普遍的“大众偏好”的概念。总的来说，这项研究有助于正在进行的关于品味传播机制和时尚变化机制的辩论。