Tag: algorithms

• November 22, 2021Episode

  Episode 6: Stoyan Sgourev

  In Episode 6, I talk to Stoyan Sgourev (ESSEC) about his recent research. Stoyan argues that musicians, just like many other individuals and organizations, use color as a "positioning device"—to build an identity. He tests his hypothesis by measuring time trends in the colorfulness and contrast of the images on Norwegian black metal bands' album covers. 

• November 2, 2021Episode

  Episode 5: Jozefien Vanherpe

  In Episode 5, I talk to Jozefien Vanherpe (KU Leuven), who just finished writing her PhD on the (un)fairness of contracts in the music streaming industry. We discuss how streaming revenues are split between different parties, the importance of the "30-second rule" and playlists, the low bargaining power of musicians relative to major record labels, and whether the blockchain will transform royalty payments.

• October 21, 2021Episode

  Episode 4: Mitali Banerjee

  I talk to Mitali Banerjee, who is an Assistant Professor of Strategy and Business Policy at HEC Paris, about her research on the relation between artistic differentiation and fame. She uses machine learning to measure how different artists are from their peers, and proxies fame through Google Ngram counts. Her findings suggest that the most transformative ideas may not always get the attention they deserve. 

• September 24, 2021Extra

  Episode 2: Readings and Links

  In the second episode of this podcast, Noah explained how he measures the novelty of pop songs. In 2017, he published a first paper on this topic in the American […]

• September 22, 2021Episode

  Episode 2: Noah Askin

  In this episode, I talk to Noah Askin, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD, about creativity in pop music. We discuss how to construct machine-based measures of sonic novelty, whether (teams with) female artists are more creative, and what is the optimal level of novelty for a pop song.