Word on the Street

doi:10.1126/science.311.5762.737k

Account Information

Guest Alerts | Access Rights | My Account | Sign In

This Week in Science

To understand what forces control the emergence of extraordinarily successful songs, movies, or plays, Salganik et al. (p. 854; see the Perspective by Hedström) have assessed the influence of social information, that is, information about what other people are watching and listening to, on market performance. By querying students online about their assessments of a defined set of songs, the authors show that access to social information increases the tendency for certain songs to do well, and that the quality of the song is only partly reflected in its market performance.