A Change of Tune: The Democratization of Market Mediation and Crossover Production in the U.S. Commercial Music Industry

Abstract

This article examines whether intermediaries and consumers exert similar influence on producers’ boundary-spanning efforts. I propose that boundary spanning is primarily constrained by intermediaries specialized in the market, not by consumers. Consequently, producers are more likely to obscure boundaries when intermediaries’ power weakens. To test these ideas, I exploit a natural experiment that shifted the hitmaking power of genre-specific radio stations to general consumers and thus partially democratized the market mediation structure of the U.S. commercial music industry. The results indicate that after democratization occurred in 2012, record labels were more likely to introduce crossover offerings that incorporated features from other popular genres. Through mechanism triangulation efforts, I found that strategic reorientation, or producers’ attempt to appeal to a broader spectrum of consumers across genre lines, plausibly explains the crossover effect. This study highlights democratizing changes that dilute intermediaries’ influence as a novel explanation of why constraints on producers’ boundary decisions have weakened in some markets. The findings suggest that intermediaries’ and consumers’ expectations may diverge, acting as conflicting forces that organizations must carefully manage. Many organizations closely monitor intermediaries that are deemed influential, but their influence should not be taken for granted as marketplaces empower consumers and become more democratized.

Feature-Based Structures of Opportunity: Genre Innovation in the American Popular Music Industry, 1958 to 2016

“…Our data run from that date through March 26, 2016. The Billboard charts are among the most reliable and accurate barometers of success and popularity in the U.S. music industry (Lopes 1992) and have been widely used by sociologists, management scholars, and musicologists (Berg 2022;Burnett 1992aBurnett , 1996Dowd 2000Dowd , 2004Lee 2004;Lena 2006;Lopes 1992;Peterson and Berger 1975;Shi 2022;Watson and Anand 2006;Zanella et al 2022). We use 22,319 songs' weekly chart appearances, which add up to 276,846 song-weeks, from 1958 to 2016.…”

“…10 The fan-based nature of the genre attributions likely reflects industry designations of genre, meaning there is likely to be strong validity to the genres and subgenres associated with each song, but it also offers greater freedom and less corporate influence than would genre data obtained from a tightly-controlled music encyclopedia like Allmusic. Discogs is a common source of genre data in music industry studies (Askin and Mauskapf 2017; Shi 2022; van Venrooij 2015; van Venrooij and Schmutz 2018).…”

“…Since the middle of the twentieth century, the Billboard charts have been the primary source for making sense of what was happening in the U.S. music industry (Anand and Peterson 2000). Even with increasing quantities of music released and made accessible over the course of our period of study, what happens on the Hot 100 chart still has an important signaling effect as a market information regime (Shi 2022; Zanella et al 2022). Music industry stakeholders have limited capacity and cannot observe what is going on in the entire population, so while many niche charts exist (e.g., country, rock & alternative, R&B), the Hot 100 remains a focal point for “field participants to structure their beliefs about the success or failure of particular recordings, artists, and sub-genres” (Anand and Peterson 2000:281).…”

The Status of Status Research: A Review of the Types, Functions, Levels, and Audiences

“…The transition in many settings from expert (critic-based) to intermediary (user-centric) rankings has opened new avenues in this stream of status research. For instance, Shi (2023) explored the implications of such transition among high-status third-party evaluators in the Billboard music rankings, which transitioned from being dictated by expert critics to being influenced by a wider demographic of music consumers. When expert critics, characterized by well-defined and unambiguous preferences, held the reins of the ranking system, the result was field isomorphism and the emergence of well-defined musical genres.…”