Pop Careers: Changing Locational Dynamics of Charting Musicians from Vinyl Age to Digital Age

• In Event: 545 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 19. Production of Culture I

Abstract

The nexus between music production and place has generated significant interest among researchers. The clustering of musicians around locations displaying higher agglomeration levels of recording industry has been noted. Moreover, studies have highlighted the geographies of music scenes and their shared communities of taste, increasingly facilitated by online practices and fora. Our paper extends these researches by tracking the locational dynamics of musicians obtaining chart success in the period 1965-2010, adopting an internationally comparative approach. Taking weekly charts’ data from nine countries (including Western European countries and the US, but also North and South European countries and Australia), we analyze the artists’ place of birth, timing and location of career start, and record label to gain insights into the changing geography of music production. We explore cluster premiums, to see whether music associated with certain locations has higher chances of national and international success, and question the impact of digitization in making artists more footloose. In so doing, we ask to what extent the sounds from specific places have become more or less dominant over time. We explain our findings against the backdrop of increasing globalization of music charts, with the intensification of flows of music across countries, and industry restructuring, with digitization and the emergence of new organizational forms.

Authors

• Amanda Brandellero, University of Amsterdam

• Marc Verboord, Erasmus University Rotterdam