Subtle nonlinearity in popular album charts

R. Alexander Bentley () and Herbert D. G. Maschner ()
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R. Alexander Bentley: Department of Anthropology, 1180 Observatory Drive, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA
Herbert D. G. Maschner: Department of Anthropolo, Box 8005, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID 83209, USA

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), 1999, vol. 02, issue 03, 197-208

Abstract: Large-scale patterns of culture change may be explained by models of self organized criticality, or alternatively, by multiplicative processes. We speculate that popular album activity may be similar to critical models of extinction in that interconnected agents compete to survive within a limited space. Here we investigate whether popular music albums as listed on popular album charts display evidence of self-organized criticality, including a self-affine time series of activity and power-law distributions of lifetimes and exit activity in the chart. We find it difficult to distinguish between multiplicative growth and critical model hypotheses for these data. However, aspects of criticality may be masked by the selective sampling that a "Top 200" listing necessarily implies.

Keywords: Culture change; self-organized criticality; multiplicative process; music albums (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
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DOI: 10.1142/S0219525999000114

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