J Cult Econ (2016) 40:29–74

DOI 10.1007/s10824-014-9226-1

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Breaking up is hard to do: the resilience of the rock

group as an organizational form for creating music

Ronnie J. Phillips • Ian C. Strachan

Received: 20 October 2013 / Accepted: 2 August 2014 / Published online: 4 September 2014
 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Abstract Though there is a long tradition of band members quitting the group or
taking a hiatus, the rock group as an organization to produce music continues to be
both popular and economically viable. The research question addressed in this paper
is whether or not it is a good idea to quit or take a hiatus from the group. We begin
with a discussion of the framework for understanding why groups are formed and
why they may be difficult to keep together. We then discuss differences between
groups in the decade of the 1960s versus today. We argue that there is something
unique about the output of the group even with the changes in the structure of
contracts, compensation, and consumer focus on the artist that explain the resilience
of the rock band as an organizational form within which to create music. We
compare the charting success of bands that have members leave the group with the
charting success of the members who left the group. We identified the groups in five
representative years: 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005. We then analyzed the entire
Billboard Hot 100 charting careers of those groups and the artists who quit those
groups. Our main finding is that when charting success is divided equally among
members, going solo pays off—there is a clear economic rationale because solo acts
have greater average charting success than the original bands they started in. The
other ensuing side projects: duos, collaborations, and other groups are not as
lucrative as the original bands. These findings are valid for members of charting
groups from each of the 5 years examined. Despite the difficulties in keeping a rock
band together, there are fewer band breakups today and remaining with the group
generally results in a longer and more productive charting career. Thus, the rock
group remains an important organization for producing contemporary music.

R. J. Phillips
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
e-mail: rphillip@me.com

I. C. Strachan (&)
West Texas A&M University, Canyon, TX, USA
e-mail: ianstrachan23@gmail.com

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However, there remains a compelling incentive to go solo. Superstars may benefit

from solo projects, but for the average, non-superstar group member, in many
circumstances it is better for the band to stay together if the income is divided
equally.

Keywords Music industry
Entrepreneurship
Theory of the firm

JEL Classification L26
Z1

Ain’t no way to keep a band together—bands come and go.

—That Thing You Do, 1996.

1 Introduction

A recent article in Billboard noted that there was a ‘rich rock-era tradition of group
frontmen (and women)’ leaving the group and going solo. The writer cited all four
Beatles, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Beyoncé, Fergie, and Justin Timberlake as
artists who had solo hits either while on break from their bands or following the
band’s breakup (Trust 2013). Though there are benefits to forming a group and
creating a unique output, keeping the group together often requires negotiation
among the band members who have differing talents, ambitions, and egos.
The research question addressed in this paper is whether or not it is a good idea to
quit or take a hiatus from the group. We begin with a discussion of the framework
for understanding why groups are formed and why they may be difficult to keep
together. We then discuss differences between groups in the decade of the 1960s
versus today. We argue that there is something unique about the output of the group
even with the changes in the structure of contracts, compensation, and consumer
focus on the artist that explain the resilience of the rock band as an organizational
form within which to create music. We compare the charting success of bands that
have members leave the group with the charting success of the members who left
the group. We identified the groups in five representative years: 1965, 1975, 1985,
1995, and 2005. We then analyzed the entire Billboard Hot 100 charting careers of
those groups and the artists who quit those groups. Our main finding is that when
charting success is divided equally among members, going solo pays off—there is a
clear economic rationale because solo acts have greater average charting success
than the original bands they started in. The other ensuing side projects: duos,
collaborations, and other groups are not as lucrative as the original bands. These
findings are valid for members of charting groups from each of the 5 years
examined. Despite the difficulties in keeping a rock band together, there are fewer
band breakups today and remaining with the group generally results in a longer and

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more productive charting career. Thus, the rock group remains an important
organization for producing contemporary music.1 However, there remains a
compelling incentive to go solo. Superstars may benefit from solo projects, but
for the average, non-superstar group member, in many circumstances it is better for
the band to stay together if the income is divided equally.

2 The economic organization of a rock-and-roll band

Though the release of ‘‘Rock Around the Clock’’ by Bill Haley and the Comets in
the movie Blackboard Jungle is credited as the beginning of rock-and-roll era in the
1950s, it was the solo artists such as Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry,
and Little Richard who were at the forefront of the popular music revolution. The
popular vocal groups of the 1950s such as The Platters and The Coasters were
vocalists who were backed by studio musicians. One of the earliest and most
influential 1950s rock groups was The Crickets from Lubbock, Texas, whose
members combined singing, guitar playing, and drumming to create a musical
output (Goldenrosen and Beecher 1996; Phillips 2013). However, it was the British
Invasion in 1964 led by The Beatles which began the shift to the importance of
groups as an entity that helped define the music of the 1960s. By the mid-1960s,
roughly forty percent of the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 song charts were by
groups (Whitburn 2013).

2.1 Solo artists versus groups

When starting out in the music industry, an artist has the choice of being a solo act
or being in a group. However, choosing between going solo and performing in a
group is not a choice most musicians make on the basis of expected financial
reward. Although asking whether being in a group is better than being a solo act is a
legitimate question, it is not the way that most artists make the decision between
solo or group. Consider that it would be like Elvis Presley trying to decide whether
he should go solo or join a group. It was never a choice because his career was
destined to be as a solo artist. Similarly, for Paul McCartney, though he has
embarked on a successful solo career today (albeit with a regular backing band),
McCartney never considered starting his career as a solo artist. What does happen
frequently, and is the subject of our research, is that someone starts out with a group
and then decides that they would rather go solo and then chooses to quit the group
(or go on hiatus).2 In this article, the focus is on artists who begin their careers in
groups and not artists who start their careers as solo artists. The choice for the artist

1
Though there has been enormous technological change in the music industry over the past 20 years, we
are not able to say how this change has affected the viability of the group. We are also not able to
compare groups with artists who were always solo artists, but rather only those who began their careers in
a group and then quit or taken a hiatus from the group.
2
As an example, Neil Sedaka, a very successful performer and songwriter, began his career with the
group The Tokens, but only remained in the group for a short time.

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then is whether economic incentives are such that solo projects are better than being
in a group. We are interested in artists like Paul McCartney and not Elvis Presley.

2.2 The group as an organizational form for creating music

There are two important issues that must be addressed regarding rock groups: why
would artists form a group and, once started, how do you keep the group together for
a sustained career? The first question can be addressed using the economic literature
on why firms exist and the latter can be usefully approached using cooperative game
theory. Though the media focuses on personality conflicts among band members,
our argument is that most group breakups are centered on the issue of whether a
particular member is being adequately compensated for their contribution.
With a solo career, success or failure depends upon the talents of a single
individual. Forming a group enables a wider choice in talents (singing, songwriting,
and playing a variety of instruments), but it also means coming to some
arrangements with other individuals. These arrangements are both economic
(dividing the revenues, compensation for each member, and so on), but it also
involves personalities. Many rock groups have started out with a bunch of friends
only to later discover that not every member of the group is equally talented, nor are
they suited personality wise for working with others. It is also may be that being in a
group first, you have the opportunity to learn about the music business and this may
help later in establishing a solo career.
Once in the group, the musician can in theory decide to pursue pure solo projects
or collaborations either by remaining in the group or by quitting the group (or taking
a hiatus from the group). These choices are thus

1. Quit the group or take a hiatus

(a) pure solo
(b) collaborations with others
2. Remain in the group
(a) pure solo
(b) collaborations with others

We could separate out quitting the group or merely taking a hiatus, but this is
often difficult to distinguish because a musician may return to the group years later.
For our study, what is important is the pursuit of solo projects or collaborations
outside the group. Also, as we will discuss below in Sect. 3.1, artists in the 1960s
were generally not able to remain in the group and pursue outside projects because
of contractual restrictions, but this is not typically a problem for musicians today.3

3
We include duos as groups, though it could be argued that the dynamics in a two-person group are
significantly less complicated than a multi-person group. In the empirical section, we separate duos from
groups with three or more members.

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2.3 Why put a band together?

Building on Coase’s work on the theory of the firm, Alchian and Demsetz (1972)
argue that creating a firm reduces transactions costs. Combining several inputs to
create a jointly produced output produces greater benefit to each input when
compared with the cost of market transactions between each input. In other words,
forming a band is cheaper than hiring each member of the group separately to
produce the output. In terms of rock groups, it means that it is better for Mick
Jagger, Keith Richards, and the other three original members of the The Rolling
Stones to form a group with the combined talents of singing, songwriting, guitar
playing, and drumming than it would be for Mick Jagger, for example, to hire a song
writer, guitar player, and drummer to create the musical output. This implies that
there is indeed a unique output of a group that could not be achieved by merely
hiring individuals to create the musical output. There is no way for Mick Jagger to
create the output of The Rolling Stones without the other members of the band.4 In
addition to musicians, sound engineers, songwriters, composers, producers, and
managers often play a pivotal role and can be conceptualized as inputs themselves
and/or as entrepreneurial talent.5 Depending on bargaining power and other
institutions at the time a contract is signed, these non-musician contributors often
receive a substantial portion of the ensuing revenue streams from the joint output of
the group.
Creating music by a rock band necessarily requires cooperation—it is a small
firm characterized by joint production. As Alchian and Demsetz (1972) demon-
strated, this creates a problem of how to compensate each input of production, or
member of the band. Because of the nature of joint production, it is difficult to
determine each individual’s contribution to the output. Alchian and Demsetz define
team production as production in which

1. several types of resources are used

2. the product is not a sum of separable outputs of each cooperating resource
3. not all resources used in team production belong to one person (Alchian and
Demsetz 1972, p. 779).

The problem for team production is that it is costly to monitor the output of each
individual, and this is certainly true in rock bands. It is not always a matter of an
individual shirking necessarily, but a matter of whether the bass player is as important
as the singer or the lead guitar player in the production of the music output (Alchian
and Demsetz 1972, pp. 779–780). The division of labor within the band presumably
helps the group produce the music efficiently (Balestrino and Ciardi 2011). Though
perhaps feeling that they deserve more, because of the cooperative nature of

4
Mick Jagger has had far more charting success in the group when compared with his solo albums.
5
Tom Dowd (of Atlantic Records) and Rick Hall (of FAME Studios, Muscle Shoals, AL) are both
examples of innovative sound engineers/producers/songwriters making substantial contributions
creatively and technologically. It should also be noted that the roles are not necessarily mutually
exclusive for any given individual.

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Table 1 Types of firms from Alchian and Demsetz (1972)

Type of firm Characteristics

Classical Joint production, one party who is common to all the contracts and who
capitalist firm has rights to renegotiate any input’s contract independently, holds the
residual claim and has the right to sell this claim
Profit sharing Encourages self-policing with a relatively small number of active
partners
Partnerships Self-monitoring partnerships, therefore, will be used rather than
employer–employee contracts, and these organizations will be small
to prevent an excessive dilution of efforts through shirking
Corporation Shareholders
Mutual or nonprofit Shirking is a major problem
Socialist Owned by the workers

production in a rock band, the lead singer could not produce the band’s sound without
the rest of the members of the band. Thus, Alchian and Demsetz (1972, p. 779) ask
the fundamental question about the economic organization of teams: ‘‘How can the
members of a team be rewarded and induced to work efficiently?’’
According to Alchian and Demsetz, the monitoring problem of the firm can be
resolved by having a residual claimant with the power to monitor and then hire and
fire members. This is what they call the classical capitalist firm. The Big Bands of
the 1930s and 1940s were closer to this type of firm since the leader of the band had
the power to hire and fire group members who were paid salaries.6 Though
potentially rock bands could be organized as classical capitalist firms, there are
several other possibilities Alchian and Demsetz note. These possibilities are profit
sharing, a socialist firm, a corporation form of organization, mutual and nonprofit
firms, and partnerships (see Table 1 derived from Alchian and Demsetz 1972,
pp. 785–789). Virtually all of the rock bands of the 1960s were initially organized as
partnerships between two or more individuals and they divided the income equally.7
It is not just monitoring costs that create problems for the economic efficiency of
a rock group, there are other transaction costs. Using the analysis of Williamson
(1985), Cameron and Collins (1997, pp. 178–179) identify a number of factors
affecting transaction costs in a rock band. These are as follows:

1. opportunistic appropriation of a band name

2. membership flux
3. use of external allocators such as the record producer
4. hierarchical governance structures
5. asset specificity

6
After 1969, Frank Zappa organized the members of his band along the lines of the classical capitalist
firm. The members were paid a regular salary and all profits went to Zappa, who also organized the tours,
wrote the music, and hired and fired members of the band.
7
However, there were many unique models. For example, any one of the four members of The Doors
held veto power over any decisions involving the group. This was to create problems years later when
some of the surviving members of the group wanted to tour.

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Thus, bands are subject to members leaving the group but trying to retain some
identity connected to group. Non-members of the group also become important in
determining the musical direction and output of the group. The person who first
forms the group may be considered the leader, but the governance structure may be
one where everyone is considered an equal contributor. Finally, each member has a
limited number of talents presumably. One may be a singer and songwriter, but few
have the talent to do it all when it comes to creating music.
Balestrino and Ciardie (2011) recognize the transaction costs problem of rock
bands as well and note that their organizational structure tends toward a hierarchical
form:
The formation of a band would therefore constitute an attempt at establishing a
form of governance to reduce the transaction costs inherent in the production
of musical output. In principle, rock bands could be seen as ‘‘loose’’
production teams without a strong hierarchical structure, an instance of what is
sometimes called a bilateral relationship: the parties to the transaction rely
mostly on their ability to adapt to circumstances as they go along, rather than
writing a fully contingent contract up front. Often, however, rock bands slide
towards a form of governance known as hierarchical relationship, as one of the
members becomes de facto leader (Balestrino and Ciardi 2011).
The bands that are successful in terms of longevity, according to Balestrino and
Ciardie (2011) are those that rely: ‘‘on a clear division of labour among its members
that allowed each of the musicians to ‘deploy his abilities at their best’.’’
In summary, rock bands are formed to reduce the transactions costs of producing
music, but the creation of the group does not eliminate all transactions costs. In
particular, what comes into play is the interactions among the members of the group
at various levels. Differences in talent, ambition, egos, and so on can cause conflict
within the group and may lead to the breakup of the group. Marschak and Radner
(1972) provide the pioneering analysis of the difficulties involved in team
production.

2.4 How do you keep the band together?

Once the band is formed, the problem now becomes how to keep the band together.
One can think of the rock band as a group in which each member shares the costs
and the benefits of being in the group with the other members (Balestrino and Ciardi
2011). In most rock bands starting out, the income generated by the group’s live and
recorded performances is divided equally among the members. However, this equal
division of income may quickly become problematic because often the lead singer
or the main songwriter feels that he or she is not receiving what they deserve based
on their contribution to the band’s music output.8

8
Cameron and Collins (1997) present a formalized model where in the typical outcome some members
of the group will be exploited in the neoclassical sense of receiving less than their marginal product, and
some may be exploiters.

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2.4.1 The economics of team production

The pioneering work on the problem of decision making for a team is that of
Marschak and Radner (1972). They summarize the key differences between single-
person decision making under uncertainty with those of the group as follows:

1. Individual members of the organization may differ with respect to possibilities of

action, with respect to their information, and with respect to their preferences.
2. The multi-person group introduces the possibility of uncertainty about other
members’ actions as well as about the state of nature.
3. Differences among individuals with respect to preferences lead to a new
problem of the definition of optimality, both for the organization as a whole and
for members of the organization (Marshak and Radner 1972, p. 337).

The outcome of the interactions among rock group members can be quite
volatile. For example, Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones may have wanted a
different musical direction from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Should Jones quit
the group or should Jagger and Richards kick him out? Jones’ death by drowning
resolved this issue.
Marschak and Radner (1972, p. 333) conclude that quite complicated assump-
tions about actions of the members and responses of other members can lead to
possibilities of coalitions forming. This would lead away from the simple and
universal characterizations of rationality in organizational behavior, and toward a
proliferation of special theories with a large element of descriptive detail.

2.4.2 Shapley value

A rock band can also be viewed as a cooperative game in which the members make
different contributions to the output of the group and also have different levels of
bargaining power.
Under these circumstances what compensation can each member expect? This
question was addressed by Shapley (1953). The Shapley value is computed by
calculating the average marginal benefit which each member brings to the group.
Though the solution in theory is straightforward, in practice it can be very difficult
for a rock group where members bring different talents and it is less clear the
relative contribution of singing versus songwriting, for example, to the group’s
charting success. As Roth notes, the Shapley value says nothing about the
accounting objectives of fairness, equity, and neutrality (Roth 1988, p. 296). George
Harrison may have felt underutilized in The Beatles, but given his contractual
arrangements in the group, was he better off remaining in the group or quitting?

2.4.3 Tacit collusion

Yet another possibility for understanding the dynamics of rock groups is viewing
the members as engaging in ‘tacit collusion’ (Ivaldi et al. 2003; Stigler 1964). The

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purpose of collusion is to gain some monopoly advantage over other participants.

Though usually applied to competitive struggles among firms, an individual band
member can also attempt to gain some competitive advantage and hence a greater
share of the group’s income by threatening to quit the band. As with the application
to firms, the actions of any particular member can induce retaliation by other
members and this complicates the outcome. One member may threaten to quit the
group, but another member can quit the group in response thus nullifying the
attempt by the member who originally threatened to quit.
A member would leave the group, perhaps only temporarily, if the expected gain
from leaving the group is greater than the expected income from remaining in the
group divided by the number of group members. The discount factor would be
important in making this decision, and it may have changed over the years as people
become less patient with being successful and careers are shorter. Don Henley may
pursue projects outside of The Eagles and declare that he will never tour with the
band again, but after a period of solo projects may change his mind.
In summary, the dynamics of keeping a group together can be quite complex. Not
only are there differences among the group members which affect the survival of the
group, the element of uncertainty about future income of staying in the group or
quitting has a significant impact on the decision by any individual member, as well
as the fact that any other individual member can retaliate to any other member’s
actions with respect to the viability of the group (Westerlund 2006).

2.5 Studies of rock band dynamics

As the previous section makes clear, the dynamics of group member interaction can
be quite complex and can make it very difficult to keep a group together for a
sustained career. Though there are many anecdotal stories about group interactions,
several researchers have sought a more comprehensive analysis of group dynamics
(Ferguson 2002; Groce 1989; Groce and Cooper 1990; Groce and Dowell 1988;
Murnighan and Conlon 1991; Thorpe 2008). Of particular value is recent work by
Conlon and Jehn (2009) and Thomas (2011).

2.5.1 Types of conflict in rock groups

Conlon and Jehn (2009) seek to understand the relationship between group conflict
and group outcomes through the study of punk and new wave rock groups. They
identify six types of conflict that may affect group outcomes:

1. process
2. relationship
3. tasks
4. financial
5. political
6. drug

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For rock groups, Conlon and Jehn argue that financial-, political-, and drug-
related conflicts are of particular importance. Process conflicts are those relating to
the strategy for accomplishing the goals of the group. Relationship conflicts are
personal conflicts among the group members not related to their specific roles in the
group. As Conlon and Jehn note, rock groups often spend more time together than
other small firms because, for example, they are on the road or perhaps live together
on an ongoing basis. Task conflicts can be viewed as relating to the division of labor
within the group (songwriting, drumming, singing, and so on). How each member is
compensated from the group’s income is the main source of financial conflicts,
though it can also relate to decisions on purchasing equipment, for example.
Political conflicts result from the role politics plays in the group’s music. Some
groups are explicitly political in their lyrics or in their performances, for example.
Members may differ on their commitment to the political element in the music.
Finally, drug use and abuse has undoubtedly been the source of numerous conflicts
within groups. This was especially important in the 1960s when drug use was very
prevalent, but remains a problem today.
The results from the sample of 82 groups provide some interesting and generally
expected results, though the statistical significance varies. Process and financial
conflict lead to less efficiency defined as number of albums produced. Financial
conflict also leads to a lower-quality output as measured by charting success.
Relationship conflict, though it leads to lower longevity for the band, has a positive
impact on charting success.
Conlon and Jehn (2009, pp. 39–42) conclude from their results that teams can
benefit from some intragroup conflict, but what is essential is that the team
understands what type of performance metric is impacted by what type of conflict
and that teams must be very clear on the goals to be achieved.

2.5.2 Causes of band strife

Thomas (2011) examines the most frequent causes of strife in fifteen local bands.
He divides these causes into four categories:

1. aspirations of group relating to work load and division of labor

2. creative issues
3. band politics and hierarchy
4. age and experience

The aspirations of group members can vary considerably. Some may want to
have long and successful careers, while others may be satisfied with just being a
band that plays cover songs at local venues. Creative issues involve both the type of
music and songwriting. Band politics refers to whether the group has an
acknowledged leader or is egalitarian in their decision making. Thomas also found
that the age or years of experience playing in a band was an important factor in
conflicts.

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Thomas reaches the following conclusions:

1. In a leader-based band, one leader is desirable. Two or more individuals vying

for power can destroy a band.
2. Criticism is a lesser issue in a band where a leader writes all of the material.
However, the leader must take care not to frustrate band members by forcing
them to play against their strengths as musicians.
3. A songwriting leader can stifle creativity by vetoing band members’ ideas (also
see Biasutti 2012 and Thorpe 2008).
4. It is common for bands’ political structure to shift over time. Informants cited
instances of bands becoming more or less democratic as time went by, and even
reverting after a time.
5. The elimination of songwriting can ameliorate some political conflicts. This
may be due more to a shift in aspirations than anything else, however.

These studies provide an excellent summary of the types of conflict that can be
involved in a group. Many, if not all, anecdotal stories fall into one of these
categories.

2.6 Solving compensation conflicts

Because the group has been successful as measured by making the charts, what
happens if a member of the group is the ‘star’ and feels that he/she should receive
greater compensation?
For simplicity, divide the group into the ‘star’ member and the rest of the group.
The ‘star’ may very well think that they could receive more income if they quit the
group. Given equal division of income, then with a four member group, the ‘star’
receives the same one-fourth of the income as ‘non-star’ members. Why not quit the
group and earn more? However, the ‘star’ has to consider whether going solo would
be as successful as remaining in the group. Similarly, the rest of the band has to
consider whether they would be as successful as a group without the ‘star’ member.
A simple numerical example will illustrate the options and the difficulty of
making a career decision based on expected future income when outcomes are
uncertain. Suppose that the successful band has a charting career of 3 years and
contains three members: A, B, and C. Charting success translates into higher income
from recording and live performances. Neglecting present value considerations,
suppose that each member’s share of 3-year income would be $40,000. If a band
member thinks that she can make more than $40,000 over 3 years as a solo artist,
then it is rational to quit the group. The problem is the uncertainty about career
success as a solo artist. A group has a unique sound which an individual may not be
able to reproduce even if the artist who quits is the lead singer and songwriter.
Again for simplicity, suppose the solo artist income is $60,000 over 3 years. If
the other members of the group were willing to give up some of their income, say
$10,000 and compensate the one wishing to leave the group with that amount, if

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Table 2 Hypothetical income for a band

Member Income if group Income if group Income if ‘star’
stays together breaks up is compensated

A $40,000 $20,000 $30,000

B $40,000 $20,000 $30,000
C-star $40,000 $60,000 $60,000
Total income $120,000 $100,000 $120,000

might be possible to keep the group together and everyone would be presumably
better off or no worse off. Table 2 summarizes the available information.
Though there is an economic incentive to keep the group together, failure to
negotiate a deal makes two band members worse off and the ‘star’ better off only if
their 3-year income exceeds $40,000. An artist who quits the band may try to
appropriate some of the benefits of being in a band by collaborations with other solo
artists. This may or may not be a successful strategy since there is uncertainty about
future income.
Another factor that is important is the longevity of chart success for groups, solo
artists, and collaborations. If groups have a longer charting life than solo artists, then
the artist who quits the band may be worse off in the long run. In the table above,
suppose that the ‘star’ only has a charting career of 2 years and hence the 3-year
income may be below $60,000. For example, income could be $20,000 in each of
the first 2 years but fall in the third year. Though this example ignores the artist’s
discount rate, how he/she values present income versus future income, especially
over a lengthy period, becomes important as well, and may fluctuate depending
upon where one is in their career (just starting out or a long-established artist).
So there are two important questions an artist must ask in making a decision
about whether to create music outside of a group:

1. Is there something ‘special’ about music created by a group that can not be
created outside the group? and
2. Do groups have longer and more successful careers than solo artists and is an
artist’s expected share of present value income greater in a group or going solo?

It should be noted that there is no reason to believe that anyone quitting a group
has a reasonable expectation about future income because of great uncertainty in the
whether consumers will continue to buy their music. This can be for a variety of
reasons including whether the artist has an inflated view of their popularity as a solo
artist.
The uncertainty of expected future income might also help explain why artists go
on hiatus from a group but eventually return. There may be something special about
being in a band that is different from the music created by solo projects. It may also
explain why collaborations among artists, though they have greater income potential
for the individual, are often not as successful. There is a difference between a group

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created for the long-term career and a temporary group created to increase an artist’s
short-term income.
In principle, a compensation scheme for the group may be straightforward: The
‘star’ member must receive a marginal benefit that compensates him/her for
remaining in the group and the rest of the group should give up some benefit that
keeps the ‘star’ from quitting. The equilibrium solution that keeps the band together
requires negotiation. The additional compensation might come in the form of a
greater share of the band’s income, but it may involve other aspects of the group as
well. This problem was especially evident in the 1960s when a group that starts out
with a name that makes individuals anonymous, such as The Animals, becomes Eric
Burdon and the Animals. Paul Revere and the Raiders added featuring Mark
Lindsay to their name, though ultimately Lindsay quit the group. David Lee Roth
left the group Van Halen after the failure to negotiate a compensation scheme to
keep him in the band. Though Van Halen found a replacement (Sammy Haggar),
Roth eventually returned to the group.9
Many other factors can make the negotiation process even more difficult. It may
be the case that there are several ‘stars’ in the group, each trying to decide whether
or not to quit the group. Songwriting is also very important since it involves
royalties that do not necessarily go to other members of the band. John Lennon and
Paul McCartney wrote most of the songs for The Beatles, and they became much
wealthier than Ringo Starr or George Harrison while the band stayed together. The
fact that all four Beatles had successful solo careers provides some indication of just
how complicated negotiations could become. George Harrison might be persuaded
to remain in the group if more of his songs could be released under The Beatles’
name, but in the 1960s when technology limited the number of songs on an album,
conflict could arise on the choice of selections for the albums.10
There have been groups that have sought to reconcile the problem of
compensating band members equitably even though they make unequal contribu-
tions to the production of music. For example, even though someone might be the
‘star’ of the group, they would recognize that without the group, they might not be a
‘star.’ If the alternative is the uncertain future of a solo artist, then it might be
possible to make compensation arrangements to keep the group together and
everyone is better off. One group from the 1980s that sought from the beginning to
find a unique solution to this dilemma was the British group Spandau Ballet
(Cameron 2006). They formed a company called Marbelow Ltd. that received all of
the band’s recording and performance income, and this was divided equally among
the five band members and their manager. The songwriter for the group, Gary
Kemp, received his publishing income separately but instructed the publisher to pay

9
Even for groups that do not add the name of a band member to the band’s name, it is often the case that
some members become better known or are assumed to be greater contributors to the success of the band
than others. Thus, it may be the case that the lead singer often becomes the one most recognized by the
fans—like Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones or Jim Morrison of The Doors—and the drummer and bass
player are in some sense viewed as making less of a contribution to the band’s sound.
10
It may have been in that case, the producer, George Martin, could have exercised some choice about
songs to be included.

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half of the royalties to Marbelow Ltd. The reason to do this is the recognition that
the band had contributed in some way to songwriting.
Instead of receiving 100 % of the publishing income due him, Kemp received a
little \60 %. This was a verbal agreement and did not appear to cause problems
until after the group broke up, and in the 1990s, three members of the group sought
to obtain more songwriting royalties. Because this was not a written contract, their
claims for additional songwriting royalties were rejected. This also rejects the view
that was implicit in their verbal contract that they had in fact made a contribution to
song creation. In a later case, the three members also tried to get use of the band’s
name, but they lost this case as well. However, by late 2009, the band members had
decided to reunite for a reunion tour.

2.7 Pure solo projects: musicians for hire

An alternative to being in a group with other artists would be if the artist pursues a
pure solo project not involving another ‘star’ artist, though the project may use
session musicians and other individuals. Under these circumstances, the artist would
hire others to help create the output. Such an arrangement is not a group for
purposes of our study since it does not have a separate musical identity as would be
the case of the groups as discussed above. Presumably, an increase in solo projects
by those leaving or on hiatus from a group would mean that either they have a
broader range of talents (songwriting, singing, playing multiple instruments, and
producing) or they can hire individuals with these talents and that doing so will
maximize their income from creating music. A solo project also does not mean that
only the artist is involved and no others. It is rare that an artist plays all of the
instruments and is also the producer as was Paul McCartney on the first album he
released after the breakup of The Beatles.

2.8 Collaborations: temporary groups

If there are benefits to producing music as a group, yet compensation for individual
members of the group is problematic, then one possibility is to form a temporary
group. This organizational form we label a collaboration. It contains elements of the
group, since there are multiple performers, but offers the possibility of better
compensation. As an example, a guitar player could collaborate with a popular
singer or two popular singers could perform a duet. Potentially, collaborations
resolve the dilemma of rewards to the individual factors of music production, while
gaining the benefits of group production. We limit our definition of collaborations to
those containing multiple artists performing on the record and not to cases where an
artist utilizes a producer for the record since this separation was the industry
standard up until the past decade as many artists also became producers of their own
records. As discussed in Sect. 3.1 below, in the 1960s, these collaborations often
had to be anonymous because of group contractual relations. Today, collaborations
are quite common among artists and represent another way in which to harness the
benefits of a group with a compensation scheme more like a solo project.

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3 Groups in the 1960s and today

3.1 Rock bands: the 1960s

The Tom Hanks’s movie, That Thing You Do, depicts the rise and fall of a small-
town rock-and-roll band in the early 1960s who have a regional hit song and then
are picked up by a record company in New York for national distribution. A
successful tour follows, but the group breaks up before it records a follow-up song.
Though fictional, the movie portrays a story that was not uncommon in the 1960s
and continues to this day, albeit with Google or YouTube the means of expanding
the audience. Bands invariably break up for one reason or another. In the movie,
Guy Patterson (played by Tom Everett Scott) tells Del Paxton (the old jazz pianist
portrayed by Bill Cobbs) that his group has something ‘snappy,’ to which Del
replies:

Del: I’m sure you do. But sooner or later something makes you crazy. Money.
Women. The Road. Hell, man just time.
Guy: Well we’ve only been together 2 months.
Del: Some bands I’ve been in, that’s 2 months too long.

When the lead guitar and vocalist, Jimmy Mattingly (played by Johnathon
Schaech) quits the band, Guy realizes that his band ‘The Wonders’ will in fact be
the ‘one-hit’ Wonders. The other two band members do not pursue a further music
career, having been diverted by marriage or the military.
Of the 146 bands that made the Billboard Hot 100 in 1965, 64 (about 44 %) had
artists leave for 220 separate side projects and solo projects. Nearly three-quarters
(74 %) of those bands broke up and half of them within 5 years. The reasons for
leaving the group are varied: death, left the music business, got married, got drafted
into the military, conflicts with other members, or getting kicked out of the band by
the other members. Compensation was a key factor in many cases. We are
specifically interested in those who embarked on solo careers exclusively and
subsequently made the Billboard Hot 100 charts. There were those like Jimmy Page
who formed Led Zeppelin after the breakup of the final version of The Yardbirds
and did not release any solo albums. There were also undoubtedly some who left the
group and did not make the charts in their solo career. For purposes of this study, a
group is defined as two or more artists performing under a common name. Examples
would be The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Everly Brothers, or Sonny and Cher.
There are countless stories about musicians quitting the band and then attempting
a solo career in the 1960s (Anonymous 1983). Kenny Rogers quits ‘The First
Edition’ after failing to follow up their hit ‘Just dropped in (to see what condition
my condition was in’) (Bowmaker et al. 2005). After several years of great success
and then a decline in their charting success, Mark Lindsay quits Paul Revere and the
Raiders. The stories go on and on. Undoubtedly, the biggest band breakup was when
Paul McCartney quit The Beatles and released a solo album. Many reasons have
been given for breakup of The Beatles—personality conflicts, the role of spouses,

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the inability of George Harrison to get more songs on the 12-song vinyl LPs of the
day, and so on. Though McCartney and other members of the group had successful
solo careers, the question is whether quitting the band was ultimately a good career
move. What if The Beatles had remained together as have their contemporaries The
Rolling Stones? Would each member of the band have become wealthier if the band
hadn’t broken up in 1970?
In the early decades of rock and roll, few artists could remain in the group and
also pursue solo collaborations. When George Harrison played on the recording of
The Cream’s ‘Badge,’ he was listed as L’Angelo Mysterioso because any recording
outside his membership with The Beatles would be a violation of his contract.
Similarly, when two members of 1960s group The Turtles, Howard Kaylan and
Mark Volman, recorded with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, they were
listed as ‘Flo and Eddie’ because of contracts with a recording company they had
signed as members of The Turtles. This could often mean that such collaborations
were not financially compensated because of the legal conflicts (Ceulemans et al.
2011; Frame 1993).
Further, when artists signed contracts as members of a group, they could not
record as solo artists. John Fogerty of the group Creedance Clearwater Revival is a
prominent example of what happens when you try to quit the group.11 Buddy Holly
had a unique arrangement in his contracts with his producer and manager, Norman
Petty. Though the Crickets were signed to the Decca subsidiary Brunswick, Holly
had a separate contract with Coral records, another Decca subsidiary. Holly could
release records either under his name on Coral or with the group on Brunswick. It
was thought that this might be a way to increase the number of releases for Holly
since DJs might be reluctant to play two songs by the same artist. Holly was one of
the first artists to have this arrangement and a decade later Frankie Valli of the Four
Seasons followed this model (Goldenrosen and Beecher 1996, p. 58). Though Holly
first insisted that all revenues of the band be shared equally, Petty evidently
convinced the group that an equal split for gigs was reasonable, but not for
recording. When the group became a trio, Holly took 50 % and Jerry Allison and J.
B. Mauldin each received 25 %. On record royalties, Holly received 65 % whether
it was a solo record or with the Crickets. The contracts with Coral and Brunswick
called for Holly and the Crickets to receive a mechanical royalty of 5 % (calculated
as 5 % times 90 % of the retail price of the record). This rate was above the 1 or
2 % many rock-and-roll artists were receiving at the time (Goldenrosen and Beecher
1996).
There was also a clear division of labor and compensation in the 1960s that was
in large part a function of the technology available. The master recording was cut
either on an expensive acetate machine with a diamond needle, or on large magnetic
tape recorders that became available after World War Two. Artists received
payments per record sold, the producers were paid their percent from record sales,
and the record company earned its profits from its share of record sales. Songwriters
and music publishing companies earned their income from the licensing of the songs

11
Fogerty for many years declined to perform his CCR songs after he left the group because he did not
benefit financially due to the contract he signed as a member of the group.

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to those who wished to record the songs. The members of a group typically did not
share in music publishing royalties.12

3.2 Rock bands: the twenty-first century

Musicians today do not face the same dilemma as musicians in rock bands in the
1960s. We believe that there are three important institutional changes in the popular
music industry affecting the decision to leave a group and the probability of success
after leaving the group. Today, artists work very hard to cultivate a close connection
with their fans, especially through the use of social media. Though groups have
always had fan clubs, social media brings the artists much closer to the fans than
previously possible. The focus of the music consumer has shifted from the
importance and prominence of the artist’s song, to a focus on the artist as a music
star. Though the lives and personalities of those in the arts and sports, for example,
have always been a focus, what this change has meant today is that the fans are there
more to see the artist than hear the music. Though the fans certainly know the songs,
it is the personality that they come to see.13
The focus on the individual artist in recent decades also has implications for the
longevity of the music (Strachan 2010). There are groups from the 1950s and 1960s
that are still touring today, and some without any original members. Examples
would be The Platters, The Coasters, The Temptations, and so on. Would the Black
Eyed Peas be able to tour in 50 years without any original members? We don’t think
so. It is the personalities of the group members that fans focus on rather than the
songs. Tribute bands are another recent phenomenon, and it remains to be seen if
they will continue. The artists today are able to create closeness with the fans
through using social media that was not possible in earlier decades.
A second very important difference is that artists today can have a contract as a
member of a group and a contract as a solo artist. This enables the musician to enjoy
the benefits of being in a group, while still pursuing financially rewarding solo or
collaboration projects and thus musicians today no longer have the same incentive
to quit the group.14
Technological changes in the music industry (Internet, mp3s) have meant a
change in the way that the producers of music are compensated. There has been a
decline in the importance of mechanical royalties paid to artists and record
companies from the sale of records and an increase in the importance of
performance royalties paid to songwriters and music publishers and, consequently,
12
Norman Petty in Clovis, New Mexico, was an exception to this. He charged a flat $75 fee per
recording but usually asked for songwriting credits and that the music would be published through one of
his music publishing companies Nor-Va-Jak or Dundee (Goldenrosen and Beecher 1996).
13
This may be a by-product of the rise of the ‘superstar’ phenomenon or what Frank and Cook call the
‘winner-take-all’ society (Frank and Cook 1995; Strachan 2010). There are large rewards to those who
can attain superstar status in an industry, especially the entertainment industry, and it can be to the
detriment of everyone else. The fact that The Rolling Stones can sell concert tickets for $500 means that
there is less consumer disposable income to spend on other artists.
14
There have been many innovations in contracts. One that has been widely utilized is the so-called ‘360
contract’ which gives the record company a share in the total revenue generated by the artist rather than
just the revenue associated with recordings (Passman 2011; Walker 2008).

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also greater emphasis on the licensing of music to commercials, movies, games, and
so on. One change this has led to is an increase in the number of songwriters for a
particular song.

3.3 Institutional adjustment

We summarize three important changes between the 1960s and today as follows:

• Norman Petty innovation: less specialization A decline in the importance of

mechanical royalties and the increased importance of performance royalties and
licensing will lead artists to specialize less and instead add an additional talent
such as producing and/or songwriting. Norman Petty was a successful music
producer in the 1950 and 1960 who charged by the record and not by the amount
of studio time needed to produce the record. As compensation, Petty typically
took co-writing credits on the song or the song was published by one of his
music publishing companies, Nor-VaJak or Dundee. Buddy Holly was the best-
known artist recorded by Petty. For a discussion of the Holly–Petty relationship,
see Goldenrosen and Beecher (1996) and Phillips (2013). The maximum number
of writers receiving credit for a song in 1965 was 8 while the maximum in 2005
was 14.
• Buddy Holly innovation: flexible contracts Artists that have separate contracts
for solo projects and membership in a group will have more success and higher
income. Holly was one of the first, if not the first, successful artist who was
under contract as a solo artist and as a member of the group The Crickets. Even
as the number of side projects remains about constant over time, we observe that
in later decades, artists in bands become involved in more collaborations and
separate bands throughout their careers (see Table 6).
• Chuck Tharp observation: it is the singer, not the song A shift of music
consumers from an allegiance to the song to allegiance to the superstar artists
means that it is the singer, not the song that is important to the music consumer.
In contrast, the late Chuck Tharp, a member of The Fireballs from Raton, New
Mexico, who often made the statement that in the 1950s and 1960s, fans were
more interested in, and had a closer personal connection to the song rather than
the performers. This was especially true for groups that contained several
members (Nichols 2007).15

These institutional changes potentially could affect the viability of the group. For
example, if an individual can perform more of the tasks involved in producing
music, there is less need to collaborate with others on either a permanent or
temporary basis. The Norman Petty innovation helps explain the contractual
innovation toward an increased number of songwriters per song and an increase in
songwriting credit going to groups members rather than a specializing external
composer. This is discussed in more detail in Sect. 5 and Table 12 in the
15
This also helps explain why 1950s groups like The Coasters can still tour today though all original
members are deceased. The fans come to hear the songs sung faithfully to match the originals.

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‘‘Appendix’’. Due to this, innovation groups that are formed could potentially be
smaller in size as well. Flexible contracts related to the Buddy Holly innovation
would tend to keep bands together and increase longevity since individual artists
could pursue their own projects while not having to break with the group. There
could be enhanced contractual freedom for tinkering with collaborations, side
projects, and other artists. Generally, this innovation would be expected to induce
groups to retain their viability. Finally, the focus on the artist personality with the
Chuck Tharp observation could help stimulate increased collaborations among
‘star’ artists who could either leave the group or remain in the group. If individual
artists become more interesting to fans than their music, more success among solo
acts would be expected. This would conspire to decrease the viability of groups.
The available data do not allow exact measurement of how much each of these
institutional changes and contractual innovations could affect the viability of the
group. Any or all of these changes could be operative and either increase or decrease
the importance of groups as effective units for producing creative output. Together
with the changes in technology affecting production, distribution, and consumption,
the recorded music industry of the twenty-first century is quite different from that of
the 1960s. However, we can measure the success of bands over time relative to solo
acts, and the success of bands relative to their connected side projects over the
course of their careers. This is what we quantify next.

4 Data on groups that charted in 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005

This section reviews the data for groups who made the Billboard Hot 100 in the
years 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005. We chose 1965 because it is a year that is
the height of the popularity of groups producing 1960s music and there are
numerous examples of groups breaking up or artists leaving the group for solo
projects. The year 2005 is selected as the most recent year that gives us enough
subsequent years to measure charting success. We first look at the groups, duos, solo
artists, and collaborations who charted in each of the 5 years to see who made the
pop charts. A deeper analysis of careers is then undertaken of the groups who
charted who had some members leave and enjoy successful charting careers by
going solo and/or joining other bands and artists. Descriptive statistics are reviewed
for the entire charting history of the groups from 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005
and all individual artists who left the groups for other creative projects. Many of
those original groups also charted in 1966 or 1967 or even later, so the bands
included here are representative of the popular music of the decade. Of the 146
groups who charted in 1965, the earliest charting year was 1955—both The Ray
Charles Singers and The Drifters—while the latest charting year was 2003—The
Rolling Stones.16 Similar variation is true for the other years. A total of 82 groups
charted in 2005. The earliest charting year for them was 1969—i.e., Santana—while
the latest charting year was 2012 as several groups continued turning out hits

16
One-hit wonders—i.e., groups charting only one song—range from a minimum of 7 % of groups in
2005–20 % of groups in 1995 with no clear trend over the decades.

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7 years on.17 The most recent year for which career data are available is 2012. Some
groups had long enough charting life spans and a sufficient number of charting
songs that they made the charts in one or more of the 5 years we examined. For
example, 20 % of the 1985 groups—those who had at least one song making the Hot
100 in 1985—had at least one charting song decades earlier and/or later.
We identify the groups and solo artists who made the Hot 100 in 1965, 1975,
1985, 1995, and 2005. These data are sourced from Pop Annual 1955–2011 8th
edition by Joel Whitburn (Whitburn 2012). The book includes chart data compiled
from Billboard’s Top Pop Singles Charts from 1955 to 2011. Specifically, this
comprises all the hits that peaked on Billboard’s main pop singles charts from
January 1, 1955, to December 31, 2011. Multiple songs can peak at each of the 100
positions in a given year. This means that there are more than 100 songs and more
than 100 artists represented on the Hot 100. The rankings are based on radio airplay
and point of sale information from music retail stores. The exact method of
calculation of these rankings has been revised several times over the years. Playlists
from radio stations, surveys of retail sales outlets, monitored radio airplay, point of
sale information, and, more recently, digital downloads have all been part of the
calculation (Williamson 1985). The electronic sales information collected by
Nielsen Soundscan is used by most music industry operators and has been used to
create the Billboard music charts since 1991.18
Singles are shorter than albums and include one or more tracks. Songs on a single
can also later come out on an album. Singles often contain a song or songs which are
the most popular song or songs from an album and therefore serve a promotional
purpose. For this research, we included all groups, duos, solo artists, and
collaborations producing singles which made the Hot 100 listing for the years
1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005. Table 3 provides the definitions of these
categories and examples of artists in those categories.
Bands or groups are defined as two or more artists working together who are a
unit, or more precisely in the sense discussed above: a firm which is uniquely
mentioned in Top Pop Singles 1955–2010 13th edition by Joel Whitburn (Whitburn
2011). This second book has essentially the same time frame as the Pop Annual
above and includes chart data compiled from Billboard’s Pop Singles Charts from
1955 to 2010. This volume includes all hits that charted on Billboard’s main pop
singles charts from January 1, 1955, to January 8, 2011. The difference with this

17
Due to space limitations, in the discussion below, we have focused on the differences in groups
between the 1960s and today and ignore the different trends in music that occurred in each decade such as
disco in late 1970s, punk and new wave in 1980s, rap in the 1990s and the resultant impact on the
organization of the group. This we leave to future research (Crain and Tollison 1997).
18
The criteria evolve over time, especially in light of the digital revolution. In July 2013, Jay-Z sold one
million copies of his album Magna Carta to Samsung for distribution with electronic devices. Though
Jay-Z argued that this deal should count toward certification, the RIAA changed its rules so that these one
million would not count toward Gold or Platinum Awards. Henceforth, sales of albums in digital format
become eligible on the release date, while sales of albums in physical format will still become eligible for
certification 30 days after the release date. Also see (Frank and Cook 1995; Strachan 2010; Giles 2007;
Hong 2012 and Strobl and Tucker 2000).

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Table 3 Groups, duos, solo artists and collaborations defined with examples
Category of productive unit Examples

Group—2 or more members (unit has a unique
listing)
Duo—a group with only 2 members (unit has a
unique listing; included with groups unless
otherwise indicated)
Solo artist—a single artist (has a unique listing)
Collaborations—2 or more standalone solo artists
together, solo artist(s) featured with a group, or
two groups together as a productive unit; a
collaboration is temporary and has no unique
listing in Whitburn’s texts
The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Byrds, Green
Day, The Black Eyed Peas
Sonny and Cher, The Righteous Brothers, Jan and
Dean, Ying Yang Twins, Brooks and Dunn
Petula Clark, Barry McGuire, Bob Dylan, Mariah
Carey, Rihanna
Chuck Jackson and Maxine Brown, Wayne Newton
(w/Bruce and Terry), Jimmy Smith w/Kenny
Burrell and Grady Tate, Jay-Z/Linkin Park, Dem
Franchize Boyz w/Jermaine Dupri, Da Brat and
Bow Wow, Snoop Dogg w/Charlie Wilson and
Justin Timberlake

second volume is that it has detailed information about each band and artist useful for
this analysis.19 A solo artist is a single person; a duo is a group with only two members;
and collaboration is defined as two or more stand-alone solo artists joining forces, solo
artist(s) joining a group, or even two groups joining together as a productive unit.
Collaborations are temporary and therefore do not have their own unique listing in
Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles 1955–2010. Though we count only the groups, duos,
collaborations, and solo artists who produced songs peaking on the Hot 100, we also
include ‘bubbling under’ charting hits toward the career data (discussed in Sect. 5) for
each artist or productive unit. Songs which are considered ‘bubbling under’ peak at a
lower position than 100, i.e., a charting position of 101 or greater.20
Tables 4 and 5 display the number of artists, unique groups, pure solo projects,
and collaborations that occurred in each of the years 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and
2005, respectively, and the associated number of songs. Figure 1 provides a
graphical presentation of the charting groups, duos, solo artists, and collaborations.
Groups produced relatively fewer charting songs over time—less than half as
many songs were produced by groups in 2005 when compared to 1965 and 1975. On
the other hand, the number of collaborations increased from 1965 to 2005. We do
not separate by genre; however, there are many examples of inter-genre crossover
collaborations in 2005 relative to the earlier decades. The year 2005 also appears
unique in that there are a large number of these artist linkages featuring multiple
charting artists. These predominantly are of the hip-hop genre—guest rappers and
temporary groupings featuring members of other rap groups begin to become
popular in 1995—although this is also a cross-genre phenomenon. Some examples
include: Kanye West ft. Adam Levine of Maroon 5, Lil Jon and The East Side Boyz
ft. Ying Yang Twins, Lil Jon ft. E-40 and Sean Paul of YoungBloodZ, Lil Scrappy
ft. Sean Paul of the YoungBloodZ and E-40, and B.o.B. ft. Rivers Cuomo of
19
Using the 14th edition, the solo and group career data have been updated through 2012 (Whitburn
2013).
20
The number of bubbling under positions averages from 20 to 35 deeper than 100, but there is some
variation here and depends on what Billboard did at different points in time.

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Table 4 Hot 100 charting song production 1965, 1975, and 1985
The Hot 100 1965 1975 1985

Category Number % Songs % Number % Songs % Number % Songs %

Groups 132 37.5 275 37.3 154 41.6 241 43.0 118 45.9 153 39.0
Duos 14 4.0 36 4.9 15 4.1 24 4.3 12 4.7 22 5.6
Solo artists 199 56.5 419 56.8 192 51.9 283 50.5 116 45.1 206 52.6
Collaborations 7 2.0 8 1.1 9 2.4 12 2.1 11 4.3 11 2.8
Total 352 100.0 738 100.0 370 100.0 560 100.0 257 100.0 392 100.0
J Cult Econ (2016) 40:29–74
J Cult Econ (2016) 40:29–74 51

Table 5 Hot 100 charting song production 1995 and 2005

The Hot 100 1995 2005

Category Number % Songs % Number % Songs %

Groups 121 38.9 178 43.4 68 21.0 92 19.1

Duos 27 8.7 29 7.1 14 4.3 19 4.0
Solo artists 138 44.4 178 43.4 181 55.9 307 63.8
Collaborations 25 8.0 25 6.1 61 18.8 63 13.1
Total 311 100.0 410 100.0 324 100.0 481 100.0

Fig. 1 The number of groups, duos, solo artists, and collaborations that charted (i.e., produced at least
one charting single) in each year: 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005 (Whitburn 2011)

Weezer. Though there is overlap among artists, and double-counting for song credit
in the Whitburn volumes, each of these is counted as an individual unit.21 Each
collaboration is a unique combination of artist inputs which joined together for one
or more individual charting song(s).22 Digital technology likely makes this sort of
collaboration more efficient. In many cases, artists do not even need to be together
spatially to record songs on which they collaborate. Some superstar artists, such as
Jay-Z, have the resources to fly to a new location for a short amount of time to
record. However, in terms of the firm, the broad economic trend is increased
efficiency and lower transactions costs among producers as a product of the digital
revolution.

21
The yearly chart snapshots, 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005, do not contain double-counted songs,
but the career data for collaborations do contain a number of instances where songs overlap among
members if collaborations are categorized inconsistently in the Whitburn books. This was corrected
wherever possible.
22
The one exception is when a group has a solo artist ‘featured’ and listed after the group name in the
song credit. This is a common occurrence and Whitburn lists those under the original group. However,
there are a sprinkling of cases where a group is ‘featured’ with a solo artist and the group is listed after the
solo artist in that particular song credit. Whitburn lists that collaboration in a separate category and we
follow his convention.

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Fig. 2 The number of artists in groups, duos, collaborations, and solo artists that produced at least one
charting single in each year: 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005 (Whitburn 2013)

Fig. 3 The average number of charting songs produced per unit (groups, duos, collaborations, and solo
artists) in each year: 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005 (Whitburn 2013)

As can be seen in Fig. 2, there is a drop in the number of artists—solo and in

groups—making the charts in general from a peak of over 1,000 in 1975 to only 300
in 2005. This indicates a higher degree of consolidation among superstar artists and
groups. The year 1985 also stands out as a year of fewer artists and less variety, and
it includes many new wave bands, many of whom were from England.23 Again,
groups are less represented on the charts since the 1970s. Notably, the number of
artists on the charts in groups has more than halved when one compares 1975 to
both 1985 and 2005. Average band size has fallen from 4.2 in 1965 to 3.8 members
in 2005. In Fig. 3, the number of songs for each productive unit—whether that is a
group, duo, collaboration, or solo act—appears relatively consistent each year
considered for those years after 1965. It may be possible that the resurgence in the
overall number of artists in 1995 relative to the adjacent decades can be explained

23
Perhaps specialized innovation and importation from across the pond held off local emulation in the
USA? We can only speculate at this point.

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J Cult Econ (2016) 40:29–74 53

Fig. 4 The average number of charting songs produced per member (groups, duos, collaborations, and
solo artists) in each year: 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005 (Whitburn 2011)

by more entrepreneurship from within the USA during that decade with hip-hop and
grunge music being largely domestic in origin.24
Turning to Fig. 4, when the number of charting songs is divided equally among
artists/members in each category, solo artists are dramatically more productive on
average than members of groups or collaborations. Duos perform relatively well
also for the individual artists in them. This is consistent in each year considered. The
simplest explanation for this is that there are diminishing returns for each member
added. This is true for these five charting years and across the spans of these artists’
careers, which we examine in Sect. 5.
Each of these years considered, 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005, provides a
large sample of artists and group configurations which can be considered a wide-
ranging snapshot of the popular music industry in each of these decades: the 1960s,
1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. We can initially conclude that solo acts do very
well in each decade: There is a high payoff to being a solo artist in each of these
years if we compare average products, in this case, the average number of charting
songs per artist or member. We also conclude that groups are losing their grip on the
charts over the years. Groups have become less productive over the decades. There
is a trend of fewer artists in charting groups and fewer groups charting altogether.
This is occurring even as groups retain their importance as individual productive
units for turning out charting singles relative to the other configurations:
collaborations, solo acts, and duos. Therefore, even though we observe less of
them over time, groups retain their efficacy at turning out charting songs.
This section has provided a summary of how well groups, duos, collaborations,
and solo artists who charted at least one single in 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, or 2005
performed in terms of charting success in those individual years. We now turn to a
much wider examination of the entire career span of charting groups, those groups
who had members quit the band and the creative ventures of those members who
left.

24
Again, this is speculation and will be considered in future research.

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54 J Cult Econ (2016) 40:29–74

5 The resilience of the group: should I quit the band?

5.1 Hypothesis

Our research question is: should an individual member quit the band? Econom-
ically, the individual should not quit the band if the marginal benefits of remaining
in the group exceed the marginal costs including opportunity costs. Though ideally
we would have actual income or sales data as a measure, we rely on length of
charting career (between first and last charting song) and the total number of
charting songs (top 10 and non-top 10) as proxies for actual income. The charts are
based on sales and radio airplay and therefore are directly related to income and
sales. The longer the career and the more charting songs, the greater the income.
There are exceptions to this for individual artists since monetary gain depends upon
the present value of the actual income of the group and the solo ventures and the
share of that income that an individual receives (based on contractual relationships
governing distribution of revenue streams among the economic actors involved in
production and distribution of recorded music). Each single on the Billboard charts
and associated album has a product life cycle associated with it and sales will peak
and taper off over time at differential rates. As previously noted, game theory
suggests that successful negotiation between members of the group will result in
each member receiving an income corresponding to their marginal contribution to
the group’s output. How well this is approximated in practice is a question not
answered here. Whether or not the group breaks up depends upon the group
dynamics as suggested by the literature on team production. Just because keeping
the group together benefits everyone monetarily at any point in time, this does not
mean that the group will stay together. All in all, band members often leave; groups
tend to be unstable equilibria as productive units. We want to know: over time, is
there an economic rationale for members quitting?
Our hypothesis is:
Because a group has a unique musical output and negotiation for compen-
sation within a group is ex ante successful, individual members of groups who
charted in 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995 and 2005 will have greater career longevity
and charting success with the group than with the side projects of going solo,
joining duos, collaborations or other groups on a per member basis (average
product).
In other words, we expect to find that side projects are less successful than
remaining in the group and thus the group member should not quit the band. The
various members of a group specialize and provide diverse creative inputs into the
production process. These inputs are complementary and lead to a more unique
output for a time and place which engenders a higher level of charting success. This
may occur through product differentiation which is difficult to replicate efficiently.
Group charting success may also occur through creative dynamism which is
conducive to longevity in producing charting songs over time. If true, groups should
remain an enduring productive unit in the popular music industry in every decade.

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The institutional adjustments outlined in Sect. 3.3 could either threaten or bolster
group success over the decades. The Norman Petty innovation would tend to decrease
songwriting specialization, measured by an increase the number of co-writers, and
increase the instance of group members sharing songwriting credit. This is a form of
contractual innovation. This has an ambiguous effect on group endurance over time.
Trends in songwriting credits can be seen in Table 12 in the ‘‘Appendix.’’ Both the
maximum and average number of songwriters per song have increased over the
decades. Own songwriting credit also increased, meaning that at least one member of
the group configuration receives songwriting credit rather than an external composer
or writer. The Buddy Holly innovation would be a force expected to keep groups
together longer as flexible contracts allow more collaboration and side project
entrepreneurship outside of the group productive unit. Groups would endure even as
artists pursued outside activity. As a corollary to this, the Chuck Tharp observation
would be expected to increase the success of those superstar artists going solo and
joining collaborations because an artist’s name is more recognizable as a brand to
consumers. Specifically, we would expect this to be evident in the later decades as we
get further away from Chuck Tharp’s heyday of the 1960s.

5.2 Career choices: side projects

Though the data for these 5 years indicate a decline of the group’s importance in
terms of presence on the charts and charting success, we are interested in musicians
who quit the group and group breakups. In this section, we consider the entire career
of not only these artists who are in groups but also those who embarked on side
projects. Comparisons can then be made between differing outcomes of success
between the original charting groups and the side projects those artists eventually
became involved with. Once again, the various measures of charting success used
for this information are calculated based on popularity and sales and is therefore a
reasonable proxy for career and monetary success. For the groups that made the
charts in each year, 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005, we collect the data on the
entire span of the artist’s charting career that is available in the Whitburn books
(Whitburn 2011, 2012, 2013).
The phrase ‘going solo’ can describe a variety of activities. If an artist goes solo,
the original band may or may not stay together. Regardless whether an artist goes
solo, she may or may not split with or quit the group. Entire bands do commonly go
on hiatus but that is not quantified here. Artists can break from their original groups
to form more or less temporary side projects, to start new bands, join existing bands,
or to start a pure solo act on their own.
We are most interested in the transition artists undertake from being in a group to
going solo. We observe all groups25 making the charts for the data discussed above and
then trace out the ensuing charting solo and otherwise related charting side projects
participated in by any member26 stemming from those groups. We categorize ‘‘side

25
The term ‘‘group’’ is defined for our purposes above.
26
Only members considered noteworthy by Whitburn (Whitburn 2011, 2013). For example, session
musicians and peripheral touring members are not included here.

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projects’’ as either (1) pure solo acts, or (2) collaborations or other groups (could be
new or already existing). These are defined in Table 3. For chronological consistency:
The solo project or new bands we are interested in must occur parallel to or after the
original band’s charting career.27 This allows us, below, to compare the success of side
projects to the success of the groups they stemmed from.28
The development of the group career and the solo careers of members who left
the group could be quite involved and with varying degrees of charting success on
the Billboard Hot 100.29 To illustrate this, Fig. 5 provides an example of a 1960s
group that is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, The Byrds. There were five original
members of the band when they began their Billboard charting career in 1965: Jim
McGuinn (who later changed his name to Roger), David Crosby, Chris Hillman,
Gene Clark, and Michael Clarke. The membership of the band changed quite a bit
over its career due to personal conflicts and creative differences (Rogan 2011,
Chap. 36). The group also included at one time such prominent members as Gram
Parsons and Clarence White, both influential artists in the country/rock genre. The
five founding members were involved in nine side projects with other artists that
also resulted in charting success on the Billboard Hot 100. As noted in Fig. 5, there
were two side projects that did not chart in the Billboard Hot 100. These side
projects also included artists who had charting solo careers in addition to their
projects with an original member of The Byrds. These successful solo artists were J.
D. Souther, Richie Furay, Graham Nash, Neil Young, Phil Collins, and Timothy B.
Schmit. However, they are not listed in Fig. 5 as a charting solo act because they
themselves were not original members of The Byrds. The only original member of
The Byrds to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 as a solo artist was McGuinn (Rogan
2011, Chap. 37). The song was ‘‘Take Me Away’’ which made it to #110 on August
21, 1976, according to Whitburn (Whitburn 2013) who includes the song as a
‘‘bubbling under’’ to the Billboard Hot 100. As mentioned above, we included
‘‘bubbling under’’ charting songs in our analysis. David Crosby did have one
charting song in 1971, ‘‘Music is Love,’’ but Graham Nash and Neil Young did
backing vocals and it was listed in Whitburn (Whitburn 2013) as David Crosby/
Graham Nash/Neil Young.30 Hillman’s solo projects were in the country and

27
Please recall that we observe singles, not albums in the Whitburn publications (Whitburn 2011, 2013).
See above for the definition of a ‘‘single’’ used here.
28
Some artists who are members of these charting groups go solo and pursue other projects that do not
make the Hot 100. The criterion was that an artist or group had to have at least 1 Hot 100 single. The
reason for this is that Whitburn lists but does not include the full information for these ‘‘bubbling under’’/
non-Hot 100 artists and groups. Consequently, there are artists and groups on the margin but not in our
data set which released singles which did not quite rise above the 101st slot. An additional caveat is that
there are certain periods of time when ranks lower than 100 are not available or reported (Whitburn
2013).
29
The female R&B group Destiny’s Child is shown in Fig. 16 of the ‘‘Appendix’’ as another example of
the group/solo career evolution.
30
The album from which this single was taken, If I Could Only Remember My Name, is clearly a solo act
by David Crosby. The album was released on March 20, 1971, and charted to #12 on the Billboard Album
Charts. However, the single, ‘‘Music is Love’’ was co-written with Nash and Young and all three names
appear on the single. Also, since Nash and Young sang and played various instruments on this record, we
consider it a collaboration/separate group.

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Fig. 5 This figure depicts the side projects stemming from the charting group: the Byrds. This band first
charted in 1965 and was an example of a group with many connected side projects. Specifically, members
of The Byrds went on to join 11 unique charting collaborations and other groups. There were also two
connected charting solo acts: Roger McGuinn, the group’s leading vocalist and guitar player, and Gram
Parsons both went solo. *Artist or group charted single(s) at a peak rank of lower than 100

bluegrass genre and were not listed in the Whitburn book because there was not a
single in the Billboard Hot 100 (Rogan 2011, pp. 789–792).
Gene Clark went solo but not with sufficient success to make the Billboard Hot
100. Gram Parsons was certainly an important member of The Byrds in 1968, but
was not an original member (Rogan 2011, Chap. 26). In any event, his solo career
produced no Billboard Hot 100 charting songs. Classic Non-Hot 100 songs by
Parsons are mentioned in the Whitburn books (Whitburn 2011, 2013) but do not
have the detailed information required for our analysis. Members of The Byrds were
also involved with The Flying Burrito Brothers (Hillman and Parsons) and The
Desert Rose Band (Hillman) but neither of those groups made the Billboard Hot 100
either (Rogan 2011, pp. 43, 824).
From our 1965 list of groups that made the Hot 100, The Rolling Stones began
charting singles in 1964 and later had two artists go solo and produce singles
successful enough to make the charts—both Mick Jagger and Bill Wyman—while
the original band spawning them continued to carry on its illustrious charting career.
Bruce Hornsby, on the other hand, started his charting career as a solo artist but later
joined another charting group, The Grateful Dead. This is not chronologically
consistent and as such does not fit the criteria. As one more example, The Beach
Boys began their charting career in 1962, endured original lineup changes, and
technically broke up (a concept more precisely explained below) by 1964 even
though the group’s charting career lasted through 1989. The solo acts stemming
from The Beach Boys were Carl Wilson and Glen Campbell. Likewise, the group

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Jan and Dean, who charted 31 singles from 1958 to 1966, is connected with The
Beach Boys because Dean Torrence joined as lead singer for a brief stint.
From our crop of groups who charted singles in 2005, Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland,
and LeToya all embarked on solo careers after or parallel to the charting tenure of
their original group, Destiny’s Child. Both groups, The Foo Fighters and Queens of
the Stone Age, had an artist collaborate side-project style with another charting
group, Them Crooked Vultures. Regardless, both original bands continue to the time
of this writing with only slight lineup changes. There were a cluster of side projects
that the group Linkin Park spawned including X-Ecutioners ft. Mike Shinoda and
Mr. Hahn of Linkin Park, and Busta Rhymes ft. Linkin Park. In the former
collaboration, two artists from Linkin Park joined with a group. In the latter
collaboration, the entire Linkin Park group received credit for being featured on a
single with the solo artist, Busta Rhymes. There are also situations where there are
collaborations attributed to two groups, such as Gorillaz/De La Soul.
In Table 6, there are 146 groups who had at least one charting single in the year
1965. Of that 146, there were 64 of those groups (44 %) which had one or more
artist(s) breakaway and pursue side projects. The total number of side projects was
220 of which about 41 % were collaborations and other groups, 29 % were duos,
and about 30 % were solo acts. Only 82 groups made the charts in 2005, but about
half of them had artists who were involved with side projects. Compared with
earlier periods, the groups who charted in 1995 and 2005 formed or joined more
collaborations and other groups. Note that the 2005 charting groups have had less
time to evolve than the 1965 and 1975 groups. This remains a characteristic of the
career data related to longevity analyzed below.
To reiterate, we excluded those side projects which came before the original
groups charting career such that the artist going solo or moving on to other projects

Table 6 The numbers and percentages for groups charting in each year and the side projects connected
with them over the span of their careers that are chronologically consistent with an artist’s decision to
leave the group
Groups 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

Original charting 146 100.0 % 169 100.0 % 118 100.0 % 148 100.0 % 82 100.0 %
groups
Groups with no 82 56.2 % 84 49.7 % 64 54.2 % 75 50.7 % 42 51.2 %
related side
projects
Groups with 64 43.8 % 85 50.3 % 54 45.8 % 73 49.3 % 40 48.8 %
related side
projects
Side projects 220 100.0 % 231 100.0 % 177 100.0 % 182 100.0 % 175 100.0 %
Collaborations 90 40.9 % 84 36.4 % 79 44.6 % 97 53.3 % 98 56.0 %
and other
groups
Duos 63 28.6 % 56 24.2 % 45 25.4 % 42 23.1 % 61 34.9 %
Solo 67 30.5 % 91 39.4 % 53 29.9 % 43 23.6 % 16 9.1 %

Here, side projects are divided into (1) collaborations and other groups, (2) duos, and (3) going solo

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Table 7 The numbers and percentages for duos charting in each year and the side projects connected
with them over the span of their careers that are chronologically consistent with an artist’s decision to
leave the duo
Duos 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

Original charting duos 14 100.0 % 15 100.0 % 12 100.0 % 27 100.0 % 14 100.0 %

Duos with no related 8 57.1 % 8 53.3 % 7 58.3 % 16 59.3 % 6 42.9 %
side projects
Duos with related side 6 42.9 % 7 46.7 % 5 41.7 % 11 40.7 % 8 57.1 %
projects
Side projects 11 100.0 % 21 100.0 % 16 100.0 % 22 100.0 % 16 100.0 %
Collaborations and 6 54.5 % 14 66.7 % 10 62.5 % 18 81.8 % 15 93.8 %
other groups
Solo 5 45.5 % 7 33.3 % 6 37.5 % 4 18.2 % 1 6.3 %

Side projects are divided into (1) collaborations and other groups and (2) going solo

or bands was chronologically consistent with a decision to go solo. The criterion is

that there is a creative project of some kind with its own unique listing in the book
that broke away from the band. It is not a necessary condition that the bands break
up permanently. These side projects in many cases include new bands formed or
joined by the artist who left the original charting group. Some side projects are truly
solo acts. All in all, each side project included here is connected to at least one
original charting group from the years considered. Some side projects are connected
to two or more original groups. Again, the important thing for these bands from
which side projects are spawned is that these bands had at least one charting song in
one or more of the 5 years we examined: the original charting groups.
Data on duos, which we count as part of groups unless otherwise indicated, can
be seen in Table 7. Duos make up a smaller proportion of the charts; however, they
follow a similar pattern as groups in their connection with side projects. Around half
of the original charting duo members pursue side projects in each year considered.
As with groups, the number of artists beginning in duos and forming or joining
collaborations and other groups increases consistently over time. Along with groups,
the percentage of duo members going solo appears to decline steadily over time.

5.3 Career choices: group breakups

An artist joining a side project, going solo or quitting is not a necessary condition
for a group breaking up. To achieve an estimate of the number of bands breaking up,
we searched in the Whitburn books (Whitburn 2012, 2013) for an explicit
description: ‘‘dissolved,’’ ‘‘broke up,’’ ‘‘disbanded,’’ lost an important original
member, or an important original band member died any time after the first charting
year. If this information was not obvious, a quick Google search was undertaken.
This is certainly not a perfect measure, especially because the definition of a
significant original member is not always clear. It is true that the bands charting in
1965 and 1975 had more time to exist and therefore a higher probability of splitting
up. However, the average years before group breakup is higher for the groups who

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charted in 1995 and especially 2005. So, the 2005 groups that do break up seem to
last longer on average—an average of 8.2 years in 2005 versus 5.14 years back in
1965. A higher percentage of 1965 groups broke up—74 versus 30 % in 2005.
Table 8 provides information on band breakups and Table 9 for duos. These
observations lend credence to the idea that groups have more staying power and
apparently more staying power 40 years later than groups did in the 1960s.
An original lineup change is defined as any original member leaving at any time,
often occurring before the group’s charting career began. An original lineup change
therefore does not necessarily constitute a breakup. While this estimate is as
consistent as possible, it is dependent upon the narrative provided from Whitburn
and so it is somewhat subjective. Referring to Table 9, duos seem to stay together
longer on average before breaking up. Furthermore, with duos, we see a much lower
percentage of original lineup changes in all years compared with groups. This is to
be expected because generally each member plays a more important role in a duo
relative to a larger group since a duo member would be more difficult to replace and
retain the same identity. The other outcomes regarding breakups of duos are
comparable to groups.
The stories behind the group breakups are often quite interesting, and there is
undoubtedly an element of competition between those who choose leave the group
and the group that remains. Sometimes the remaining members of the group are
unable to continue, but more often than not, the group continues and finds a
replacement for the member who left. This can led to direct chart competition.
Though it is not possible to relate all of the stories of the groups analyzed in this
data set, a few examples are illustrative of what happens when someone quits a
band.
For example, Peter Gabriel was a member of Genesis from 1966 to 1975 and was
clearly their leading personality as a result of being the primary vocalist who was
well known for his on stage persona. Though the group sought to project the image
of an innovative collective of artists, Gabriel’s artistic recognition as an individual
led to problems with the other members of the band. Reportedly, Gabriel left the
group on good terms with the other members. After Gabriel’s departure, Phil
Collins, who had been the drummer for the band since 1970, became the lead singer
and songwriter for Genesis. In 1985, while still a member of Genesis, Collins had
three number one Billboard hits as a solo artist: ‘One More Night,’ ‘Sussudio,’ and
‘Separate Lives.’ In the following year, Gabriel had a number one hit with
‘Sledgehammer’ and Genesis had a number one hit with ‘Invisible Touch.’ In 1999,
Collins and Gabriel reunited with the other members of Genesis to re-record the
song ‘The Carpet Crawlers’ for a greatest hits album. In recent years, there have
been discussions of reuniting Genesis with Gabriel returning as lead vocalist and
Collins returning to his original role of drummer.
The group Van Halen had its biggest hit in 1984 with ‘Jump.’ The lead singer,
David Lee Roth subsequently quit the group and had two charting songs in 1985:
‘California Girls’ at #3 and ‘Just a Gigilo’ at #12. Roth was replaced by Sammy
Hagar, who had been a member of Montose, and had only modest success as a solo
artist from 1977 to 1987. Van Halen charted again in 1986 with ‘Why Can’t this be
Love’ at #3 and ‘Dreams’ at #22 with Hagar as lead vocalist. Roth later returned for

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Table 8 Group breakups 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005

Group ‘‘breakups’’ 1965 (N = 146) 1975 (N = 169) 1985 (N = 118) 1995 (N = 148) 2005 (N = 82)

Groups with original lineup change 71 48.6 % 58 34.3 % 63 53.4 % 55 37.2 % 46 56.1 %
Groups which broke up 108 74.0 % 121 71.6 % 83 70.3 % 111 75.0 % 25 30.5 %
Groups which broke up (B5 years) 71 48.6 % 65 38.5 % 35 29.7 % 58 39.2 % 9 11.0 %
Average years before breakup 5.14 6.08 7.95 6.68 8.20
61

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123
Table 9 Duo breakups 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005
Duo ‘‘breakups’’ 1965 (N = 14) 1975 (N = 15) 1985 (N = 12) 1995 (N = 27) 2005 (N = 14)

Duos with original lineup change 2 14.3 % 1 6.7 % 2 16.7 % 5 18.5 % 1 7.1 %
Duos which broke up 10 71.4 % 12 80.0 % 8 66.7 % 15 55.6 % 3 21.4 %
Groups which broke up (B5 years) 6 42.9 % 6 40.0 % 3 25.0 % 7 25.9 % 1 7.1 %
Average years before breakup 5.30 9.17 13.38 7.00 11.33
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a short stint with Van Halen which resulted in Hagar’s exodus from the group. There
were undoubtedly hard feelings all around with this realignment of the original
group and Roth did not remain in the group permanently. Hagar rejoined the band
from 2003 to 2005, and Roth returned to the group from 2006 to 2008.
The flexibility artists enjoy today to pursue a variety of musical collaborations is
illustrated by the career of Chester Bennington, a member of the group Linkin Park.
The group Stone Temple Pilots had enjoyed great success but the lead singer, Scott
Weiland, had medical and drug abuse problems. The group went on hiatus from 2002
to 2008. Weiland sued the band and was in turn counter-sued. In 2013, Bennington
replaced Weiland as the lead singer in Stone Temple Pilots but Linkin Park did not
break up and continues to the present. Artists today have greater freedom to pursue side
projects while their original bands remain more or less intact.

5.4 Empirical results

We measure success of productive units in two ways: per unit and per member.31
We can thus compare how well one type of productive unit did (groups with side
projects, for example) versus another type (collaborations and new groups). In order
to be able to compare an individual member of a productive unit with going solo, we
divide career success measures by the number of members of the productive unit.
Since musicians seldom leave unsuccessful groups and then embark on successful
solo projects, it is perhaps not surprising that the groups where someone leaves are
more successful than groups where someone does not. It would be the members of
The Rolling Stones who would have opportunities for side projects and not those of
a ‘one-hit-wonder’ group like John Fred and his Playboy Band.32 Thus, for all
groups in 1965, the average charting career length is 7.6 years, while for those
groups with members who undertake side projects, the average charting career is
11 years (Table 10). Also, in 1965, groups with members who engage in side
projects have longer charting careers than the side projects of duos, other
collaborations, or artists who went solo.
However, if we compare charting careers on a per member basis, the story is not
exactly the same. By dividing by the number of members, we are attributing an
equal share of the output to each member. For 1965, groups with side projects do
better on a per member basis (2.5 years) than their related side projects of duos
(0.8 years) and other collaborations (0.6 years), but not as well as their related solo
artists who have a career average of eight charting years.
If we look at 2005, things are much the same as the groups in the 1960s. On a per unit
basis, groups with side projects have an average charting career of 10.8 years which is
better than all side projects per unit. However, the per member average career length
for the group (2.8 years) is still smaller than for the solo career (3.2 years).
For the purposes of this study, the most important comparison is whether the
average success was significantly different between remaining in the group and

31
Frequency distributions for our measures of success for each year are in the ‘‘Appendix’’.
32
It would be interesting to know whether a group does better or worse once an artist leaves the group,
but we leave this question to future research.

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Table 10 Length of charting career (in years) as a measure of success

1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

Original charting groups

Per unit 7.6 9.4 10.2 6.6 9.8
Per member 1.8 2.0 2.3 1.8 2.6
Groups with side projects
Per unit 11.0 13.2 14.2 9.4 10.8
Per member 2.5 2.8 3.1 2.5 2.8
Joined collaborations and other groups
Per unit 2.5 2.7 2.6 1.9 1.4
Per member 0.6 0.7 0.9 0.4 0.4
Joined duo
Per unit 1.6 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.4
Per member 0.8 0.7 0.7 0.8 0.7
Went solo
Per artist 8.0 7.4 4.4 5.2 3.2

Table 11 Number of charting songs as a measure of success

1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

Original charting groups

Per unit 12.9 13.0 11.6 7.0 10.8
Per member 3.1 2.8 2.6 1.9 2.9
Groups with side projects
Per unit 18.8 18.7 17.0 10.2 12.8
Per member 4.4 3.9 3.7 2.7 3.3
Joined collaborations and other groups
Per unit 3.0 3.5 3.1 1.9 1.5
Per member 0.7 0.9 1.0 0.4 0.4
Joined duo
Per unit 1.5 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.4
Per member 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7
Went solo
Per artist 8.1 6.6 4.1 3.9 3.7

going solo. The test statistics for the difference in means between the groups which
had artists leave and their connected solo projects are in Table 13 for charting career
length in the ‘‘Appendix’’. All are significant at the 95 % level with the exception of
1965 charting careers lengths which is significant at the 90 % level.
If we look at the number of charting songs as a measure of success, the story is
much the same (Table 11). On a per unit basis, the group does better. On a per
member basis, the group does better than the side projects of duos or other
collaborations, but not as well as a solo career. The test statistics for the difference

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in means between the groups which had artists leave and their connected solo
projects are in Table 14 for number of charting songs in the ‘‘Appendix’’. All are
significant at the 95 % level.

5.5 Should I stay or should I go?

Our analysis shows that when charting success is divided equally among members,
going solo pays off—there is a clear economic rationale because solo acts have
more charting success than the original bands they started in. That is true for
members of charting groups from each of the 5 years examined. The other ensuing
side projects: duos, collaborations, and other groups are not as lucrative as the
original bands. This is true in every decade examined as well. We speculate that
superstars benefit from solo projects, but for the average, non-superstar group
member, in many circumstances it is better for the band to stay together—if the
group’s income is divided equally.
Groups are seldom composed of individuals who would each be viewed as a
‘superstar’ on their own. The Beatles come closest to being such a group, but for other
groups, they are composed of talented and specialized individual inputs but ones with
differential probabilities of success in solo projects and side projects once divorced
from the band. It may be that for the typical group, one individual has superstar
potential and for that individual it is clearly better to go solo. However, this usually
makes most of the remaining band members worse off. Even with The Beatles, is the
body of music they produced as individuals greater than what they would have
produced had the band stayed together? It is a counterfactual that can’t be answered.
Additional group members also imply diminishing returns. Regardless, the
incentive to go solo remains and this is an important reason why groups tend to be
unstable equilibria. However, bands as units retain their efficacy in both producing
charting hits and the longevity of their chart presence relative to the other
configurations: solo, duos, and collaborations; this occurs in spite of the fact that
groups have a reduced presence on the charts relative to the other productive
configurations. These results are consistent with our hypothesis. Bands endure as an
important part of the popular music industry, but this also shows that for individual
artists the impetus to go solo has been very strong and remains so.

6 Conclusion

Technological change due to the expansion of the Internet and the creation of music
encoding files like MP3 has been coupled with institutional changes in the music
industry which have upended the business model in the popular music industry as it
developed from 1955 to the turn of the twenty-first century. The reduction in the
costs of producing and distributing music, together with changes in how musicians
are compensated for their work, increased flexibility of contracts, and greater
interaction between fans and artists through social media has radically altered the
music industry from what existed for most of the Twentieth Century. Though solo
artists have gained greater prominence in the music industry, groups remain a viable

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organizational form for creating music. Not everyone can be a solo artist and for
those who begin their careers in groups, it is probably best to remain in a group if
they do not have superstar potential.
It is very challenging to make it big in the popular music industry. Though
Nielsen Soundscan has expanded their collection of information on sales of records,
streaming of songs, and so on, one clear change between the 1960s and today is that
there are fewer songs on the charts, and about half as many artists. The total number
of unique artists in bands and solo on the Hot 100 has gone from 811 in 1965 to a
peak of nearly 1,000 in 1975 to \500 in 2005. Competition remains intense and
added to this is the fact that music consumption competes with other forms of
entertainment (movies and so on), and this will force musicians and others in the
music industry to be innovative in their approach to earning their living by creating
popular music. One problem for artists in the 1960s was that the institutional
structure did not allow members of the band to earn income outside the group. The
only choice was to quit the group. Even though solo artists breaking away from
bands performed well on the charts in the 1960s, institutional changes since then
have meant that artists no longer have to make the choice between quitting the
group and going solo. The result of this flexibility is both increased production
opportunities for the artists (especially superstars) and a greater variety of music for
the consumer. The changes in the industry were brought about by technology but
also by a change in the way in which bands are organized. The groups became
organized more efficiently and the members benefited. Though some look at the
1960s with nostalgia about the value of music over profits, it is clear that the
evolution has been one toward better music and better compensation for the artists.

Appendix

See Figs. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and Tables 12, 13, 14.

Fig. 6 Frequency distribution for charting career length (in years) for 1965

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Fig. 7 Frequency distribution for number of charting songs for 1965

Fig. 8 Frequency distribution for charting career length (in years) for 1975

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Fig. 9 Frequency distribution for number of charting songs for 1975

Fig. 10 Frequency distribution for charting career length (in years) for 1985

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Fig. 11 Frequency distribution for number of charting songs for 1985

Fig. 12 Frequency distribution for charting career length (in years) for 1995

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Fig. 13 Frequency distribution for number of charting songs for 1995

Fig. 14 Frequency distribution for charting career length (in years) for 2005

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Fig. 15 Frequency distribution for number of charting songs for 2005

Fig. 16 Destiny’s Child first charted in 1997. Since that year, members of the female R&B group were
involved with 17 charting collaborations and all three members reached the Hot 100 as separate solo acts

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Table 12 The attribution of songwriting credit for each year for groups with side projects and the duos,
collaborations/other groups, and solo acts they are connected with chronologically
Songwriting credit 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

Groups with related side projects

Average number of songwriters 1.86 2.03 2.06 2.78 3.24
Maximum number of songwriters 7 8 8 16 14
Songs with own songwriting credit (%) 44.5 63.6 71.0 80.1 89.6
Artists who joined duos
Average number of songwriters 1.95 2.27 2.13 2.62 3.66
Maximum number of songwriters 5 10 6 8 10
Songs with own songwriting credit (%) 26.6 39.0 52.4 68.3 83.1
Artists who joined collaborations and other groups
Average number of songwriters 1.96 2.12 2.5 2.80 3.72
Maximum number of songwriters 8 10 6 13 10
Songs with own songwriting credit (%) 43.0 64.8 65.3 85.2 85.4
Artists who went solo
Average number of songwriters 1.79 1.97 1.89 1.89 2.80
Maximum number of songwriters 7 6 6 5 7
Songs with own songwriting credit (%) 32.1 53.8 48.4 80.9 84.0

Included are the (1) average and (2) maximum number of co-writers as well as (3) the percent of own
songwriting credit. The latter indicates the percentage of groups, duos, collaborations/other groups, and
solo acts in which at least one member of the productive unit received songwriting credit. Each one of
these measures increases over the decades considered and provides background for the Norman Petty
innovation

Table 13 Test statistics for significant differences in means between the charting career length of groups
with side projects and the charting career length of their associated solo breakaway acts
Charting career length Groups with side projects

1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

Solo projects
1965 0.0880
1975 0.0000
1985 0.0000
1995 0.0052
2005 0.0000

Reported here are p values. All are significant at the 95 % level with the exception of 1965 is significant
at the 90 % level

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Table 14 Test statistics for significant differences in means between the number of charting songs of
groups with side projects and the number of charting songs of their associated solo breakaway acts
Charting songs Groups with side projects

1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

Solo projects
1965 0.0001
1975 0.0000
1985 0.0000
1995 0.0001
2005 0.0000

Reported here are p values. All are significant at the 95 % level

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