There was a very interesting article in the New York Times on “cumulative advantage.” Basically some research was done showing that a major cause of different things becoming popular is their popularity. People are more likely to like a song or an artist if lots of other people already like it. The researchers in the article did experiments where they set up separate music downloading communities that showed counts of how many times each song had been downloaded and played. Different songs became hits in the different communities depending on which ones just happened to hit the right peak at the right time. In communities where download and play counts were not listed, the differences between hit songs and other songs were not as extreme.

So what does this mean? All the music industry executives and others who are out looking for the next big hit may be going about it all wrong. Instead of looking for the band with the perfect sound or perfect look, they may be better off trying to come up with new ways of marketing the bands to make them popular quickly and thats what will lead to even more popularity. This also means that the bands that do make it are not necessarily any better than the ones who don’t (although they are more popular).

This research is somewhat concerning in a sense though. Why is the popularity of a song or artist so much more important to us than the actual quality of the song? Can we not judge songs on our own? Do we feel the need to be the part of some herd mentality? How does this affect our views on other issues such as politics? This effect would seem to make it even harder for someone to stray from the majority, or to make their own decisions on the issues rather than just go with the crowd.