The spawns of the creative domains of literature, the visual arts, the performing arts, and architecture add the essential humanistic element to our lives. Together, these cultural products command a universal presence, while the structures that are responsible for their creation and dissemination showcase incredible complexity. I believe there is both a high need and ample opportunity to use data-driven methodologies and analytical models in conjunction with boundary-spanning management theories to optimise these markets.
Publications
Come Together, Right Now? An Empirical Study of Collaborations in the Music Industry
with
Victor Martínez de Albéniz
(Forthcoming in
Management Science)
Abstract
Artist collaborations in music have been on the rise, which tend to produce commercially and critically successful songs. We seek to uncover the effect of these collaborative projects on their career trajectories, and identify the factors that lift an artist's profile in the short and in the long term. We develop a theory of collaboration based on the transfer of capital between the collaborating artists which facilitates spillovers across time. To validate the theory, we use weekly radio plays of individual songs, across 25 European countries, between the years 2011 to 2018, together with a multi-attribute Spotify dataset of songs, and Hofstede's cultural dimensions...
Working Papers
Play It Again, Sam?
The Impact of Innovation on Success in the Music Industry
with
Victor Martínez de Albéniz
(Under 2nd round review at Management Science)
Winner, YinzOR 2021 Video Talk Competition at Carnegie Mellon University
Abstract
Newly released music by a certain artist is never assessed in isolation by the audiences, who tend to compare it with the previous musical catalogue of the corresponding artist. Through a repeated interaction with the artist’s music, the audiences build their own expectations about the future releases which affect the overall market reception. In this paper, we provide a general framework that incorporates the dynamics of these references towards addressing the classical dilemma of incremental versus radical innovation. We develop a theory rooted in classical behavioral economics of reference-building, and consider preference...
Riding the Gravy 'Trend'? Bandwagon Effect Vs. Conspicuous Adoption of Music in User-Generated Content
with
Xabier Barriola
(Major revision at M&SOM)
First Place, INFORMS 2020 RMP Data-Driven Research Challenge
***
First Place, INFORMS Social Media Analytics Section's 2021 Student Paper Competition
Abstract
User-Generated Content on platforms like NetEase and TikTok serve as both means of entertainment and promotion vehicles for the music and the artists featured in them. In this paper, we study the music adoption preferences of NetEase users who actively engage in this content-making process as the function of their click-through activity while they browse the two-sided platform, and their standing in the social hierarchy that organically emerges in the platform's network structure. We develop a theory grounded in the propensity of the users
to either showcase bandwagon eect by conforming to the crowd opinion or to conspicuously deviate from...
Designing Layouts for Sequential Experiences: Application to
Cultural Institutions
with
Ali Aouad
Victor Martínez de Albéniz
(Major revision at
Management Science)
Second Place, INFORMS RMP Jeff McGill Student Paper Award
***
First Place, INFORMS Service Science Section's 2022 IBM Student Paper Award
Abstract
A fundamental issue faced by experience providers – ranging from retailing to cultural institutions – is to display a collection of items for physical or digital interactions. The arrangement of the exhibits in different locations, which we call the layout, affects the visitors’ choices over time and space, thereby driving their engagement with the offered experience. This paper develops a data-driven analytics framework to inform such operational decisions, taking into account visitors’ preferences. First, we propose a dynamic choice model, called Pathway MNL, that represents visitor activity as a sequence of conditional logit experiments influenced by the layout...
Keep It or Skip It? Sequential Music Consumption with Reference Effects
with
Noah Askin
Khwan Kim
(Reject & resubmit at Management Science)
Abstract
Sequential consumption of experiential products gives rise to inter-temporal associations. Developing recommendation algorithms that account for these effects while designing experiences for users can be effective in enhancing user engagement. Using music streaming as the paradigmatic context of such interactions -- consumption of multiple songs across multiple sessions -- we construct a utility-based theoretical framework that accounts for users' past consumption, leading to: (a) Recall-based references, that are built on past sessions, and (b) Locally-based references, which are the result of...
Work in Progress
Sequential Experiences: The Effects of Affect Infusion and Adaptation
with
Victor Martínez de Albéniz
Guillaume Roels
Coming Soon
Cultural Institutions:
The Effect of Physical and Digital Layout on Visitor Experience
with
Ali Aouad
Victor Martínez de Albéniz
Coming Soon