Platforms, Power, and Promotion: Evidence from Spotify Playlists*

Luis Aguiar, Joel Waldfogel

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

31 Scopus citations

Abstract

Many online markets are dominated by a handful of platforms, raising concerns about the exercise of market power in the digital age. Spotify has emerged as the leading interactive music streaming platform, and we assess its power by measuring the impact of its promotion decisions – via platform-operated playlists – on the success of songs and artists. We employ discontinuity and instrumental variables identification approaches and find large and significant effects of playlist inclusion on success. Our results provide direct evidence of a prominent platform's power and suggest a need for continued scrutiny of how platforms exercise their power.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)653-691
Number of pages39
JournalJournal of Industrial Economics
Volume69
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This study was partly supported by Grant-In-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (KAKENHI No. 25862073) and Futokukai Foundation, the Lion Corporation Tokyo, Japan. The authors declare that there are no competing interest in this study.

Funding Information:
  This study was partly supported by Grant-In-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (KAKENHI No. 25862073) and Futokukai Foundation,

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Editorial Board of The Journal of Industrial Economics and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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