Climbing the Charts: What Radio Airplay Tells Us about the Diffusion of Innovation

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Description

Despite the growth of digital media, traditional FM radio airplay still remains the essential way for musicians to achieve commercial success. Climbing the Charts examines how songs rise, or fail to rise, up the radio airplay charts. Looking at the relationships between record labels, tastemakers, and the public, Gabriel Rossman develops a clear pi

Reviews

"There is a lot to recommend about this book. Rossman excels at balancing methodological details to satisfy the academic reader and intuitive explanations of techniques and results for the nonacademic reader. The book also takes on theories from various areas, and the author does not play favorites. It's clear he has a genuine interest in identifying the true mechanisms, which he distills in his writing."--Brandy Aven, ASA Economic Sociology Newsletter "Gabriel Rossman not only breathes life into the perhaps stale world of Top 40 but also offers messages of importance for diffusion research. Students of the mass media and industry dynamics, as well as those interested in diffusion models and mechanisms, will find much food for thought in Climbing the Charts."--David Strang, Administrative Science Quarterly "[B]rilliant."--Megan McArdle, Bloomberg View "Rossman's book is an outstanding example of a new, hybrid genre. It draws promiscuously on a range of methods to build a rich empirical understanding of a particular cultural object and industry... If this book is radio's swan song, it's a good one."--Jacob G. Foster, American Journal of Sociology "Climbing the Charts represents an important contribution to the sociological study of diffusion and music. In the end, we know much more about how innovations diffuse and Rossman updates our understanding of gatekeeping in the music industry."--Alexandre Frenette, Sociologica

Author Bio

Gabriel Rossman is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.