Publication Bias

Illustration by Ayo Arogunmati

Consumers often give more value to things that are scarce. For example, artists that limit access to their personal lives are sometimes regarded as higher status. This is why tabloid distribution through newspapers, radio and television are popular. As a result, the market value of an artist and their art display an inverse relationship to the level of access the public has. Low access, high value art. 

Michael Jackson and Prince were two artists who managed their personal lives closely, and their music, while of great quality, was of higher status partly because it was one way to extract some details about their lives. From 1972 to 1991, MJ released eight albums, an average of less than one album per year and Prince released thirteen albums, averaging more than twice the average of MJ. Prince had a lower publication bias than MJ, yet their status is viewed almost equally by the marketplace [1]. 

The quantity of music has risen significantly compared to the era that MJ and Prince dominated. There’s lower friction between the point of creation and the final distribution to the end user, yet our ability to compare the top artists is more difficult as they can now manage their levels of publication biases. Artists no longer depend on record labels to get their music into the hands of consumers, but still, it is counterintuitive that our judgment of who is best still relies on mostly quality and less on quantity of output.

Should an artist that releases more music and of great quality be viewed more favorably than the artist that has a more selective output but also delivers high quality art? it is easy to knockoff the artists that release a ton of art but deliver subpar quality, but can we justify choosing the artist that releases less as better even through their biggest competitor consistently places themselves in line for criticism of their art?

The debate over who is the best is unique to rap music. It seems like each year the market is always trying to crown a new king but usually the Lindy Effect overrides the market [2]. One such debate is between Drake and Kendrick – two artists who are on the opposite spectrum of publication bias, but closer in terms of quality of music. Drake releases more music than Kedrick, yet Kendrick edges Drake in status within the genre.

In the competitive field of athletics, selective output is not rewarded as much it is in art. Imagine the NBA highlighting a player who makes five of ten 3-point shots in a season over another player who attempts a thousand shots and makes five hundred of these shots – this will never happen. Quantity and quality are both important in athletics and almost any other profession. We give more status in every other field, except arts, to those who exhibit what can be described as the Q Squared Effect [3]. Art only cares about one Q though and that is quality. 

There is a clear advantage for those artists that can fade into the background and if they show up and provide high quality art, they can maintain their status. Nas and Jay Z, in their prime, were also on opposite sides of the publication bias spectrum with Nas taking a position at the higher level of publication bias, yet his status remained on par or higher than Jay Z.

There have been times where quantity and quality intersect, but this typically happens over a short horizon. For example, when DMX released two albums in a twelve-month period with high quality art, the market recognized he was exhibiting the Q Squared Effect, and he placed himself at the top of the genre. This was considered ground-breaking at the time but ranking in art is based on quality over time and not necessarily frequency of output, and this difference in comparison to other professions makes ranking difficult.

The idea of publication bias has not been explored fully within the arts, but in academic research this is a common thing among researchers whereby the outcomes of their experiments influence their decision to release the results. If we take this idea and extend it to the arts, then artists may choose to release music only if their experimentation meets certain criteria [4].

An artist might choose to be more biased based on the type of music that’s selling currently or the marketing dollars the label puts into the distribution channels. Or the artist may just not like the output. We can conclude that an artist who’s had a recent success is also more likely to have less publication bias relative to another artist with a poor recent performance. 

Publication bias can also be assessed on a space scale. Some artists have higher publication bias in comparison to their peers but lower bias in relation to artists that may be above them based on consumer preference. Other artists have higher publication bias throughout their career. Sade, who releases music once a decade, is an example. This extreme publication bias is unusual and is likely reserved for a small number of artists. Finally, there are artists who exercise high publication bias after first adopting a low publication bias – for example, Rihanna [5].  

The question of whether quality should be the only criterion for art is still unanswered. Should we start to evaluate artists based on the Q Squared Effect? Maybe this question needs no further inquiry, and we should just assess music based on quality and not the frequency of output. Since we rank top artists based on skill and not how many records sold, it is either the case that artists that release more never quite deliver on the quality or we tend to judge the ones with more output more harshly than necessary. If the result of low publication bias is more scrutiny and less status, then it would make sense for the artists to release less. 

Notes

[1] The period evaluated for Prince is from 1978 to 1991

[2] Lindy Effect is the idea that the things or people that have been dominant for a long time will continue to dominate. This is evident in all areas of life - business, ideas, cultural values, music, countries

[3] Q Squared Effect - this is a concept made up by me in which we place value on both frequency of output and quality of output in every other professional arena except the arts

[4] Music is a form of experimentation and the release or not is the bias in publication - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias

[5] It appears that once an artist can monetize their brand in other areas that are less taxing physically, the publication bias increases