The Matthew Effect extends across all fronts, even in Music.

A social phenomenon that depicts how advantage begets further advantage. Primarily, it is linked to “the rich gets richer and poor gets poorer” adage.

Here, it is applicable to matters of fame or status.

This concept first focused on inequality within social sciences in the way scientists were recognized for their work. A further study discovered that the inequality that existed in social sciences pretty much existed in other institutions - including Entertainment.

The term - Matthew Effect was coined by Robert K. Merton in 1968 to describe how among other things, eminent scientists will likely get more credit than a comparatively unknown researcher even if their work is similar.

It also means that credit will usually be given to researchers who are already famous.

For context, a prize will almost always be awarded to the most senior researcher involved in a project, even if the bulk of work was done by a graduate student.

The Matthew Effect leans towards reputation to influence the wider communication system.

Imagine instances where [disproportionate] visibility is given to pieces from acknowledged creatives, at the expense of equally valid or superior pieces from unknown creatives.

For context, cases where download counts or ‘best-seller lists’ for books or music influences consumers to follow apparent popularity.

Once a song is becomes “the most streamed”-anything within a period, people pay more attention.

Either because they heard it’s being well streamed or because the algorithm behind streaming platforms notice and put it in front of more people.

The Matthew Effect is coined from a biblical verse in the book of Matthew 25:29

“For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

The Matthew Effect references how advantages accumulate; starting out with an initial advantage that leads to further advantages, which in turn widens the gap between those who have and those who don’t.

More often than not, people are influenced by popularity before deciding who to follow or read. They [subconsciously] consider follower counts, number of Likes, Comments, Reviews and other relevant metrics.

One popular illustration of the Matthew Effect is a 2006 study from Princeton University.

In the study, researchers set up 9 independent online music stores containing the exact same library of unknown songs from unknown artists.

Basically, a situation where the same songs and artists competed.

These online markets where divided into two categories:

- The Independent condition

- The Social Influence condition

The independent condition was used to realize a baseline of what people gravitate towards when they’re not influenced by others.

In this condition, users only saw names of artists and their songs, but were not privy to any popularity metrics, ratings from other users.

This condition of course unadulteratedly captures the inherent appeal of songs as users make decisions independent of whatever pre-existing determinant.

The Social Influence condition was used to establish how much influence pre-existing popularity has on users’ behaviour.

Here, users were able to see download [play] counts by others in the same market.

The experiment which started out with a download count of zero for all songs then attracted about 14,341 internet users. Once assigned, users were left to freely preview and download songs.

To keep the experiment independent, users browsing through one market could only see their own market’s download counts.

The study was set up to confirm if the same songs will make the top if we had parallel universes in which the same songs compete.

And would it be the ones determined by people to be 'best' when they’re not being influenced by others.

As you might imagine, the songs that through random chance happened to be downloaded first stood out to subsequent users - as they had a higher download count.

This higher download count then signaled popularity and thus gave the song an advantage over the others.

The popular songs were downloaded even more and quickly garnered a massive advantage over the others. When people dont know what’s good, they rely on others for guidance.

So, its a case of those who have advantage gaining more. However, it's not 100% bad news for nobodies as the research also has it that good content is unlikely to do poorly in some cases, meaning there’s no harm in striving to be better at what you do.

It’s a worthwhile goal that should result in at least some success, that snowballs into cumulative advantage.