North and Hargreaves, Eminence in pop music Popular Music and Society 19:4
We assume there is a consensus (within Western culture) that Mozart or the Beatles are important. Is there a way to quantify that?
Paul Famsworth conducted studies on this question focusing mostly on 'classical' music. What kind of evidence would point to such a consensus?
"For example, Famsworth reports on the stability of the eminence of classical music composers within and between groups of musicologists and school pupils; on the eminence of jazz composers between groups of college students; on the frequency with which different composers' works were played by a symphony orchestra over consecutive decades; and in number of times the works of composers were broadcast on a radio station over a three-year period. Famsworth also demonstrated that there were positive correlations between musicologists' ranking of composers for eminence and the frequency with which orchestras played their works; between the frequency with which composers' works were played by a symphony orchestra and a radio station; between both of these latter two measures and the frequency with which composers' works had been recorded;"
Stability over time .
Agreement across different groups.
Correlation between measures.
There are reasons to doubt that would translate to pop music directly.
Research has shown that for pop music preference is highly influenced by the music encountered in late teens.
Pop music, youth oriented as it is, has less of the apparatus that supports 'good taste' for classical music.
Pop music is simpler meaning there is less scope for differentiation between very good (Mozart) and mediocre (Kuhlau?).
Taste in pop is part of group identity (which requires differentiation rather then consensus).
North and Hargreaves look at 200 artists who had a UK #1 between 1955-94
Data consisted of:
rating by 275 subjects, male & female, ages 10-78 (5 subgroups). These were asked to report musical training (except the youngest group) and sorted into low, mid, high groups of similar size.
They were given a list of 200 artists (who had #1 hits in the UK) and had to identify eminent ones - "those who in your own personal opinion have performed music that most deserves to be called to the attention of others"
archival data about the artists:
Chart success (UK & US #1 singles/albums, top 10 singles/albums; 8 measures)
Chart durability (number of weeks in US & UK charts; 4 measures)
Trying to assess 'Impact' through sales data.
Total number of singles (assessing productivity of artist)
Number of albums still on sale in the UK.
Space allocated to each artist in relevant encyclopaedias.
Analysis
They did identify a tendency to select as eminent artists who were active when the subjects were adolescents. (with statistical analysis to back this up quantitatively, for example:
Fifty+-year-olds' selections corresponded much less with "overall eminence" than did other age groups, and only correlated significantly with 25- to 49-year-old subjects' selections. This suggests that the 50+-year-olds were particularly unlikely to agree with other subjects.
On the other hand agreement within an age group while generally high, decreased with age (older participants had more divergent views).
Correlations.
Because of the effect of age on choice of eminent artist they had to compensate for the different sizes of the each age group when comparing participant's response to chart data.
In general eminence of artists tend to decrease with time ("reverence for the recent" effect.)
with the exception of artists of 1955-60 who are still considered eminent.
This contrasts with the situation in 'classical' music where there is no correlation with artist's date of birth.
Relatively weak correlation between participant ratings and encyclopaedic space. They do correlate with the opinions of 25-49 (perhaps the target market for these books).
More productive artists tended to be more eminent (causation can go in either direction; or both are caused by a common factor).
Number of currently available albums also correlated with eminence.
In both the last 2 measure the correlation was weaker then similar correlation reported by Famsworth.
Discussion
They identify their key findings and suggest avenue for further research.
The correlation between UK and US was weak suggesting the local culture shapes pop music taste more then for 'classical'.
The fact that pop taste seem to be related significantly to music of late teens suggests that the 'come back' of older artist could be more a discovery by younger audiences then a rediscovery by original listeners. Further studies could try to isolate these effects.
eminence for older artists relates to overall chart success but this was not the case for younger ones.
Encyclopaedia space correlated most closely with the frequency of top 10 albums (as opposed to durability in charts or number of #1 singles for example). Further research could try to explain this fact.