Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

More Than A Feeling: Exploring The Drivers Of Music Catalog Values, Emily Nutting

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines which characteristics of songs affect transaction price in the sale of artist’s music catalogs. My analysis tests many variables, including the number of years between the song’s release its catalog’s sale (age); the natural log of the number of Spotify streams the song has (popularity); the genre of the song; themes in the song, such as dating, violence, romance, obscenity, sadness, and feelings; and elements of the song like danceability, energy, loudness, instrumentalness (the prevalence of instrumentals relative to vocals in a song), and acousticness (the measure of sound made using instruments as opposed to electronic means). …