What “Makes” a “Popular” Song?: Accounting for Creative Capital

Abstract

This work examines the impact of “creative capital,” in the form of credited songwriters and producers, on a song’s “popularity,” as measured by chart performance. Executing twelve ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions upon an aggregated dataset composed of Billboard Hot 100 weekly chart rankings, song specific features accessed through Spotify’s Web API, and “creative capital counts” pulled with the assistance Microsoft 365 Copilot, I find that additional “creative capital” generates a statistically significant improvement in “popularity.” Moreover, I determine that the marginal benefit of such additions depends upon the interaction of songwriter and producer “creative capital groups” and increases with the overall number of credited creatives within each group. Additionally, the results of this study indicate a lack of statistical significance of song audio features in determining song “popularity.”