Learning or herding? Understanding social interactions and the distribution of success on a social music sharing platform
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Digital sharing platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud crowdsource the process by which users can discover high quality new products among an increasingly vast flow of new products, acting as on-going digital test markets. Social features on these platforms can accelerate the discovery process by encouraging sharing of information and facilitating learning, thereby reducing the number of people sampling poor quality products. This may more quickly concentrate platform traffic on higher quality alternatives. Social features may also include a feedback loop if people care about consuming the same products as their peers. Given previous research showing that social feedback loops can distort or even invert the relationship between product quality and product popularity, if such feedback loops exist, the discovery and filtering capabilities of crowdsourcing may be compromised, emphasizing the need to understand the nature of social interactions on such platforms. Utilizing data from SoundCloud, a music sharing and streaming site, I develop an approach to separately identify and measure these two separate endogenous social effects with and without feedback loops. Results suggest that the platform's social features do have informative effects but that the feedback loop plays a dominant role for the most successful songs.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Sams, James Andrew |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Hartmann, Wesley R. (Wesley Robert), 1973- |
| Degree supervisor | Nair, Harikesh S. (Harikesh Sasikumar), 1976- |
| Thesis advisor | Hartmann, Wesley R. (Wesley Robert), 1973- |
| Thesis advisor | Nair, Harikesh S. (Harikesh Sasikumar), 1976- |
| Thesis advisor | Bronnenberg, Bart J |
| Thesis advisor | Reiss, Peter C. (Peter Clemens) |
| Degree committee member | Bronnenberg, Bart J |
| Degree committee member | Reiss, Peter C. (Peter Clemens) |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Graduate School of Business. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | James Sams. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Graduate School of Business. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by James Andrew Sams
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-ND).
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