The DOI matches its Crossref record; 20 of the 21 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market
Abstract
Hit songs, books, and movies are many times more successful than average, suggesting that “the best” alternatives are qualitatively different from “the rest”; yet experts routinely fail to predict which products will succeed. We investigated this paradox experimentally, by creating an artificial “music market” in which 14,341 participants downloaded previously unknown songs either with or without knowledge of previous participants' choices. Increasing the strength of social influence increased both inequality and unpredictability of success. Success was also only partly determined by quality: The best songs rarely did poorly, and the worst rarely did well, but any other result was possible.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Rosen's economics of superstars [21] shows formally that when the cost of serving additional consumers approaches zero, cultural markets concentrate rewards on a small number of winners regardless of marginal quality differences”
From AI as a Democratizing Force in Indie Game Development (2026) · cites this paper as [21]
In the citing paper
“The market-structure literature of §2.4 predicts what follows: superstar concentration under near-zero marginal cost [21], against which the long-tail alternative [22] is directly testable with the outcome data of Table 13, and choice-abundant markets whose winners are selected by social dynamics rather than quality gradients [23].”
From AI as a Democratizing Force in Indie Game Development (2026) · cites this paper as [21]
In the citing paper
“When considering inequality in heterogeneous populations, there are two distinct aspects to take into account-the dispersion of outcomes and the predictability of outcomes (Lynn, Podolny, & Tao, 2009;Salganik, Dodds, & Watts, 2006).”
From Relative Feedback Increases Disparities in Effort and Performance in Crowdsourcing Contests: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment on Topcoder (2022) · cites this paper as Salganik, Dodds, & Watts, 2006
In the citing paper
“In the case of an inherent quality or virtue, more predictable outcomes imply more equality and fairness (Cook & Hegtvedt, 1983;Jasso, 1983;Salganik et al., 2006).”
From Relative Feedback Increases Disparities in Effort and Performance in Crowdsourcing Contests: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment on Topcoder (2022) · cites this paper as Salganik et al., 2006
In the citing paper
“However, social success and quality of content are only partly correlated (Salganik et al., 2006).”
From Social Drivers and Algorithmic Mechanisms on Digital Media. (2024) · cites this paper as Salganik et al., 2006
In the citing paper
“in a classic experiment, the popularity of all but the very best and worst songs was shown to be more related to stochastic early positive reception by other users than by their inherent quality”
From Stewardship of global collective behavior (2021) · cites this paper as [87]
In the citing paper
“Moreover, the presence of a significant number of neutral individuals holding a random opinion and a low confidence level around these two attractive forces tends to increase the unpredictability of the final outcome [15].”
From Social Influence and the Collective Dynamics of Opinion Formation (2013) · cites this paper as [15]
In the citing paper
“In agreement with previous works [15], the collective outcome appears to be poorly predictable and strongly dependent on the initial conditions [36].”
From Social Influence and the Collective Dynamics of Opinion Formation (2013) · cites this paper as [15]
In the citing paper
“Although there is on average a positive relationship between quality and success [66]”
From Relative Citation Ratio (RCR): A New Metric That Uses Citation Rates to Measure Influence at the Article Level (2016) · cites this paper as [66]
In the citing paper
“the ultimate winners in such contests are determined not only by the intrinsic value of the work but also by more intangible social variables [66].”
From Relative Citation Ratio (RCR): A New Metric That Uses Citation Rates to Measure Influence at the Article Level (2016) · cites this paper as [66]
Citations
Cites
Riggins, F. J., & Mitra, S. (1990) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.27-6637 · Cited by 16,590
Social Influence: Compliance and Conformity
Cialdini, R. B., & Goldstein, N. J. (2004) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.142015 · Cited by 6,077
A simple model of global cascades on random networks
Watts, D. J. (2002) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.082090499 · Cited by 2,673
Self-citationA Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change as Informational Cascades
Bikhchandani, S., Hirshleifer, D. A., & Welch, I. (1992) · Journal of Political Economy · doi:10.1086/261849 · Cited by 1,980
(1998) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511663901 · Cited by 1,774
(2009) · Harvard University Press eBooks · doi:10.2307/j.ctv1kz4h99.12 · Cited by 1,685
Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch's (1952b, 1956) line judgment task.
Bond, R. A., & Smith, P. B. (1996) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.119.1.111 · Cited by 1,466
Processing Fads and Fashions: An Organization-Set Analysis of Cultural Industry Systems
Hirsch, P. M. (1972) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/225192 · Cited by 1,331
Walker, D. M., Frank, R. H., & Cook, P. J. (1996) · Southern Economic Journal · doi:10.2307/1061199 · Cited by 1,180
Allison, P. D. (1978) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2094626 · Cited by 1,133
Adler, M. (2016) · American Economic Review · Cited by 391
Entrepreneurship in Organizations: Evidence from the Popular Music Industry
Peterson, R. A., & Berger, D. G. (1971) · Administrative Science Quarterly · doi:10.2307/2391293 · Cited by 365
Bielby, W. T., & Bielby, D. D. V. (1994) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/230412 · Cited by 336
The Economics of Real Superstars: The Market for Rock Concerts in the Material World
Krueger, A. B. (2005) · Journal of Labor Economics · doi:10.1086/425431 · Cited by 336
Limited Depth of Reasoning and Failure of Cascade Formation in the Laboratory
Kübler, D. F., & Weizsäcker, G. (2004) · The Review of Economic Studies · doi:10.1111/0034-6527.00290 · Cited by 275
Vany, A. D. (2003) · Routledge eBooks · doi:10.4324/9780203489970 · Cited by 247
Entertainment Industry Economics
Vogel, H. L. (2007) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511510786.002 · Cited by 227
Measuring Inequality: A Methodological Handbook.
South, S. J., & Coulter, P. B. (1990) · Contemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews · doi:10.2307/2072306 · Cited by 220
A Stochastic Model of Superstardom: An Application of the Yule Distribution
Chung, K. H., & Cox, R. A. K. (1994) · The Review of Economics and Statistics · doi:10.2307/2109778 · Cited by 165
稔, 杉. (2002) · W waves · doi:10.4993/wwaves1995.8.22 · Cited by 89
Flagged first, then by citations
1 of the 21 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.
Research works printed but not linked: 4
- R. E. Caves Creative Industries (Harvard Univ. Press Cambridge MA 2000).
- S. Rosen, Am. Econ. Rev.71, 845 (1981).
- M. Adler, Am. Econ. Rev.75, 208 (1985).
- L. R. Anderson, C. A. Holt, Am. Econ. Rev.87, 847 (1997).
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Lazer, D., Pentland, A., Adamic, L., Aral, S., Barabási, A.-L., Brewer, D., Christakis, N., Contractor, N., Fowler, J., Gutmann, M., et al. (2009) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1167742 · Cited by 3,365
Conducting behavioral research on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk
Mason, W., & Suri, S. (2012) · Behavior Research Methods · doi:10.3758/s13428-011-0124-6 · Cited by 3,172
“For instance, Snow et al. (2008) showed that for a variety of natural language processing tasks, such as affect recognition and word similarity, combining the output of just a few workers can equal the accuracy of expert labelers.”
The spread of behavior in an online social network experiment
Centola, D. (2010) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1185231 · Cited by 2,692
“(iv) Finally, this design allows the same diffusion process to be observed multiple times, under identical structural conditions, thus allowing the often stochastic process of individual adoption (21) to be studied in a way that provides robust evidence for the effects of network topology on the dynamics of diffusion.”
A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization
Bond, R. M., Fariss, C. J., Jones, J. J., Kramer, A. D. I., Marlow, C., Settle, J. E., & Fowler, J. H. (2012) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature11421 · Cited by 2,575
Newman, M. E. J. (2018) · doi:10.1093/oso/9780198805090.001.0001 · Cited by 2,453
Metadata
- Authors
- Salganik, M. J., Dodds, P. S., & Watts, D. J.
- Affiliations
- Santa Fe Institute (US)
- Corresponding author
- Salganik, Matthew J.
- Dodds, Peter Sheridan
- Watts, Duncan J.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2006-02-10
- Volume
- 311
- Issue
- 5762
- Pages
- 854-856
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2147453867
- Cited by
- 2,231
- References
- 21
- Citations by year
- 2026: 168 · 2025: 104 · 2024: 102 · 2023: 123 · 2022: 103 · 2021: 231 · 2020: 104 · 2019: 130 · 2018: 131 · 2017: 142 · 2016: 121 · 2015: 123 · 2014: 133 · 2013: 92 · 2012: 122
- FWCI
- 116.70
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Keywords
- cultural market, social influence, music download, product success, consumer choice
- MeSH terms
- Consumer Behavior, Culture, Forecasting, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Music, Research Design, Social Behavior, Sociology, Internet
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
