Feature-based structures of opportunity: Genre innovation in the American popular music industry, 1958 to 2016
By: Kim, Khwan and Askin, Noah
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Material type: 
BookPublisher: American Sociological review Description: 89(3), Jun, 2024: p.542-583.Subject(s): Cultural Studies, Popular Music, Genre Innovation, American Music Industry, Feature-Based Structures, Opportunity Structures, 1958–2016, Music Genres, Industry Dynamics, Creativity, Cultural Production, Product features, Innovation, and diversity, Cultural markets, The production of culture, Music
In:
American Sociological reviewSummary: This article investigates how feature-based structures of opportunity shaped genre innovation in the American popular music industry between 1958 and 2016. By analyzing shifts in musical features, industry practices, and audience reception, the study highlights how genres evolve not only through artistic creativity but also through institutional and market dynamics. The concept of “feature-based structures of opportunity” emphasizes how certain musical attributes—such as rhythm, instrumentation, or lyrical themes—create openings for new genres to emerge and gain traction. The paper situates these developments within broader cultural and industrial contexts, tracing the rise of genres such as rock, hip-hop, and electronic music, and examining how they reconfigured the landscape of popular culture. By bridging cultural studies with industry analysis, the article underscores the interplay between creativity, commerce, and social change in shaping the trajectory of American popular music. Authors offer a new perspective on how cultural markets are structured and the conditions under which innovations are more likely to emerge. We argue that in addition to organization- and producer-level factors, product features—the locus of marketplace interaction between producers and consumers—also structure markets. The aggregated distribution of product features helps producers gauge where to differentiate or conform and when consumers may be more receptive to the kind of novelty that spawns new genres, our measure of innovation. We test our arguments with a unique dataset comprising the nearly 25,000 songs that appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 chart from 1958 to 2016, using computational methods to capture and analyze the aesthetic (sonic) and semantic (lyrical) features of each song and, consequently, the market for popular music. Results reveal that new genres are more likely to appear following markets that can be characterized as diverse along one feature dimension while homogenous along the other. We then connect specific configurations of feature distributions to subsequent song novelty before linking the aesthetic and semantic novelty of individual songs to genre emergence. We replicate our findings using industry-wide data and conclude with implications for the study of markets and innovation.- Reproduced
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00031224241246271
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Articles
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Indian Institute of Public Administration | 89(3), Jun, 2024: p.542-583 | Available | AR133612 |
This article investigates how feature-based structures of opportunity shaped genre innovation in the American popular music industry between 1958 and 2016. By analyzing shifts in musical features, industry practices, and audience reception, the study highlights how genres evolve not only through artistic creativity but also through institutional and market dynamics. The concept of “feature-based structures of opportunity” emphasizes how certain musical attributes—such as rhythm, instrumentation, or lyrical themes—create openings for new genres to emerge and gain traction. The paper situates these developments within broader cultural and industrial contexts, tracing the rise of genres such as rock, hip-hop, and electronic music, and examining how they reconfigured the landscape of popular culture. By bridging cultural studies with industry analysis, the article underscores the interplay between creativity, commerce, and social change in shaping the trajectory of American popular music. Authors offer a new perspective on how cultural markets are structured and the conditions under which innovations are more likely to emerge. We argue that in addition to organization- and producer-level factors, product features—the locus of marketplace interaction between producers and consumers—also structure markets. The aggregated distribution of product features helps producers gauge where to differentiate or conform and when consumers may be more receptive to the kind of novelty that spawns new genres, our measure of innovation. We test our arguments with a unique dataset comprising the nearly 25,000 songs that appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 chart from 1958 to 2016, using computational methods to capture and analyze the aesthetic (sonic) and semantic (lyrical) features of each song and, consequently, the market for popular music. Results reveal that new genres are more likely to appear following markets that can be characterized as diverse along one feature dimension while homogenous along the other. We then connect specific configurations of feature distributions to subsequent song novelty before linking the aesthetic and semantic novelty of individual songs to genre emergence. We replicate our findings using industry-wide data and conclude with implications for the study of markets and innovation.- Reproduced
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00031224241246271
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