Survivorship bias in the music industry

“Survivorship bias. Most have never heard of this term, but it really does impact the music industry where a striking 90% of artists, even the talented ones, fail to achieve major success. Over the years, many have questioned me why certain bands with strong music and substantial label support do not become significant acts.

Time and again, I have pointed to survivorship bias, or survival bias, as a key explanation. Yesterday the question also came up in a conversation with my colleague Nele Bonte with whom I run the social media consultancy FOX DS.

Survivorship bias is the logical error of focusing only on the entities that have passed a selection process while ignoring those that did not. This can lead to incorrect conclusions due to incomplete data. In the music industry, this manifests when people only consider the artists who have achieved fame and visibility, neglecting the vast majority who have not. This bias can result in overly optimistic beliefs by overlooking multiple failures, such as excluding bands that left the roster of labels, or simply stopped playing music altogether. It may also foster the false belief that the successful few in the industry possess some unique qualities, rather than acknowledging the role of chance or misinterpreting correlation as causation.”