How Winning (or Losing) a Grammy Changes the Music Artists Make

How do artists respond to status-shifting awards? In examining this question, we focus on the consequences of winning a major Grammy, a high-profile honor in the music recording industry. Using a neural learning approach, we examine creative differentiation of award winners in terms of the stylistic and acoustic distances of their albums from those of other artists, including contenders for the award who did not win. We analyze whether the styles and acoustic fingerprints of post-Grammy music recordings of winners change, and whether they become more or less similar to the music albums of other artists. Panel regression estimates find that after winning a Grammy, artists produce music that stands out more stylistically from other artists. Artists who were nominated but did not win, on the other hand, become more similar to other artists than they were before the nomination. The findings carry implications for theories of change of cultural products.