Abstract
I make use of the characteristics of more than 6000 rock bands to empirically analyze if and how the stability of their members helps them to get a higher level of success. Bands cover all genres of Rock music (from Country to Punk), and their performance is assessed by having a song ranked in Billboard 100. Analyzing how the turn-over of members of a band affects their performance, it appears that the total number of musicians that left the band (compared to the actual number of musicians) – used as an indicator of instability –positively impacts the probability of a success. This may reveal that more talented musicians tend to be recruited after the departure of founding members, or that new members bring fresh ideas. The latter interpretation is supported by another result, showing that solo artists have a higher probability of success than bands. Finally, I also show that bands that come back to the stage after a split do not perform better.
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Notes
Interview of the band Gojira, in Rock Hard magazine, n°219, April 2021, 18-25. Duplantier and Andreu are, respectively, guitarist and drummer. Translation from French language by the author.
The situation is probably different in other genres, in particular in electronic music (although other genres can also be prone to teamwork – one can think of Rap for example).
The online magazine Loudwire, in July 2021, identifies 80 metal bands that obtained at least one certified platinum album from the RIAA; none of them can be classified as a Black metal band (see, https://loudwire.com/rock-metal-bands-multiple-platinum-albums/—last consulted, February 2022).
Other genres, more recent and / or with different eco-systems, rely more on the diffusion of singles, through several web-based platforms, and their success is referenced by other measures. The advantage of focusing on Rock is that it allows one to rely on the history of modern music, since the 1950s. Obviously, studies based on classical music can go even further, but have to rely on different measures of success (see, for example, Borowiecki, 2022). Moreover, although the Billboard relies on officially registered sales, Naghavi and Schulze (2001) have shown that bootlegging does not crowd-out sales, and thus the use of official sales is relevant.
Their results are also a confirmation of the importance of “team players”, who give their teams a leading advantage, as shown in Deming and Weidmann (2022), as well as of the self-discipline that comes from being in a band when rewards are uncertain and potentially long to emerge (see Fahn and Hakenes, 2019). Such situations can legitimately be considered as typical in music.
The Billboard data is “Billboard Hot 100”. The data has been downloaded from GitHub, where it is regularly retrieved from Spotify. For an example of an entry, see the one for Willie Nelson in 1958: https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/1958-08-02/.
https://www.spirit-of-rock.com. An advantage of this online encyclopedia is that it is up-to-date, and covers even the latest developments. By definition, even the best book describing line-ups changes runs a risk of being outdated right at the time is comes off the press. This is the case with, for example, Pete Frame’s books (see his 1993 book as well as the others he has published). Moreover, existing books do not cover with the same degree of precision all the genres and sub-genres that are present in the spirit-of-rock encyclopedia. The spirit-of-rock database is probably not perfect, but it has many advantages over the alternatives for the issue at stake. Moreover, if the imperfection is essentially an omission bias of former members, it means that the spirit-of-rock database may suffer from an undercounting of past members. This would lead to an underestimation bias, which would make the result of the paper even stronger. The Appendix of the paper contains a comparison of spirit-of-rock with other online encyclopedia, confirming its larger coverage.
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Acknowledgements
The author thanks the referees of the journal, as well as participants in the ACEI2020+1 conference, and in particular Hendrik Sonnabend and Wojciech Whardy, as well as Nicolas Debarsy, Nicolas Jean, and Fabrice Le Lec for stimulating remarks and suggestions. Eric Mabicka and Hancito Garçon provided excellent research assistance and feedback on this project. The usual disclaimer applies.
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Farvaque, E. For those about to rock… is stability a determinant of rock bands success?. J Cult Econ 48, 145–166 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-023-09477-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-023-09477-8