Can Facebook popularity help albums to remain in the sales charts?

ABSTRACT

We empirically investigate the impact of Facebook popularity on the survival of mainstream albums in the sales charts, with our results indicating that running an official Facebook page can improve such survival. Nevertheless, for artists running pages, even in Taiwan, where more than 75% people use Facebook, a blind pursuit of the popularity of all posts will not ensure better survival in the charts.

KEYWORDS:

• Facebook
• record industry
• word-of-mouth
• survival analysis

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• D12
• L82
• M31

Acknowledgements

This article has benefited from the comments provide by Chun-Yao Huang, Chien-Heng Chou and the anonymous referee. The usual disclaimer applies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ The penetration rate = (number of subscribers/population). This user count was obtained from the website, http://www.internetworldstats.com/facebook.htm (accessed 31 August 2017).

² There are even online shops selling Likes, e.g. ‘boostlike’ at https://boostlikes.com/facebook-likes (accessed 31 August 2017).

³ This estimation comes from the website, http://www.internetworldstats.com/facebook.htm (accessed 31 August 2017).

⁴ The G-Music Chart compiles sales information from all chains of G-Music Limited, the largest local music retail and wholesale chain in Taiwan. See the G-Music Chart website at http://www.g-music.com.tw/ (accessed 30 July 2014).

⁵ Among 228 albums, 33 albums were released in 2011.