Park JiHye, Park JooSeok, Park JaeHong
School of Management, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea.
Front Psychol. 2018 Oct 5;9:1880. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01880. eCollection 2018.
With the growth of social network services, users have been able to freely create and share music in ways that were once thought unimaginable. Sharing a music video through such platforms can now be done simply by anyone with access to a computer or smart phone. Online music content can be divided into two major categories-user-generated content (UGC) and company-generated content (CGC). While previous studies on the content of online music videos have examined the impact of this content on, for example, a company's marketing effectiveness and brand image, they have given little attention to the different effects of user engagement of UGC and user engagement of CGC. This study attempts to address this lack by examining how these two kinds of user engagement differently influence user music choices. We will also examine the differing levels of impact on users across the initial, middle, and final periods after a song is released. In order to examine the different impacts of user engagement, we apply an estimation of generalized least squares (GLS) with a panel dataset of 1,035 songs found on Gaon, the official South Korean music ranking chart. We use the number of music video shares generated by users and firms as proxy variables of user engagement in UGC and CGC, respectively. We find that user engagement of UGC and CGC positively influence music sales. We also find that the effects are not static, but rather change in the initial, middle, and final periods after a song is released. In particular, this study finds that the effect of user engagement of UGC on sales is greater than the effect of user engagement of CGC in the initial period but that the effect of the latter becomes similar to that of former at the end of this period. This finding suggests that managers of digital music providers should encourage consumers to create their own content in the initial period, as potential consumers are more likely to buy songs with more UGC content and shares in the initial period.
随着社交网络服务的发展，用户能够以曾经被认为无法想象的方式自由地创作和分享音乐。现在，任何能够使用电脑或智能手机的人都可以通过此类平台简单地分享音乐视频。在线音乐内容可分为两大类——用户生成内容（UGC）和公司生成内容（CGC）。虽然先前关于在线音乐视频内容的研究考察了此类内容对公司营销效果和品牌形象等方面的影响，但它们很少关注UGC的用户参与度和CGC的用户参与度所产生的不同效果。本研究试图通过考察这两种用户参与度如何不同地影响用户的音乐选择来解决这一不足。我们还将考察歌曲发布后的初始、中期和末期对用户产生的不同影响程度。为了考察用户参与度的不同影响，我们对从韩国官方音乐排行榜Gaon上找到的1035首歌曲的面板数据集应用广义最小二乘法（GLS）估计。我们分别将用户和公司产生的音乐视频分享数量用作UGC和CGC中用户参与度的代理变量。我们发现UGC和CGC的用户参与度对音乐销售有积极影响。我们还发现这些影响并非一成不变，而是在歌曲发布后的初始、中期和末期会发生变化。特别是，本研究发现，UGC的用户参与度对销售的影响在初期大于CGC的用户参与度对销售的影响，但在这一时期结束时，后者的影响与前者变得相似。这一发现表明，数字音乐提供商的管理者应在初期鼓励消费者创作自己的内容，因为潜在消费者在初期更有可能购买具有更多UGC内容和分享的歌曲。
