To be fair, the soundtrack for OBWAT is excellent, and I can totally see why chorus kids would be into it! "Man of Constant Sorrow" was constantly playing in the background of the early '00s and seeped into my consciousness along with "Hero" by Chad Kroeger and "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)" by Nine Days. I listened to the CD long before I ever watched the movie, and finally got it out from the library mostly just because I was curious about the context of some of the songs.
This topic of trying to predict what's the next big hit is discussed at length in Nassim Taleb's book Black Swan, which you might find interesting if you haven't already read it. (I certainly did!) He argues that Black Swan phenomena (basically anything with an outsize impact that results in a distribution skewed to a "winner take all" system) is inherently unpredictable, but there are certain strategies one can take to minimize or maximize their impact. You can see the same thing at work in fandom, where most fics receive a small percentage of views compared to a handful of juggernauts; it's certainly true on a microlevel with my own work--the graph of all my A03 stats almost perfectly matches the classic Black Swan curve.
Star Wars is THE classic example in my mind of unexpected success. Nobody expected it to make money - not the studio, not the actors, not George Lucas. And yet people loved it and still do to this day! Heck, even Harry Potter boggles my mind when you think about it, given how it's far from the first "British wizard at boarding school for magic" story by a long shot, and the prevailing wisdom of children's book publishers at the time was that 500+ page hardcovers would never sell.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2021-10-18 11:34 pm (UTC)This topic of trying to predict what's the next big hit is discussed at length in Nassim Taleb's book Black Swan, which you might find interesting if you haven't already read it. (I certainly did!) He argues that Black Swan phenomena (basically anything with an outsize impact that results in a distribution skewed to a "winner take all" system) is inherently unpredictable, but there are certain strategies one can take to minimize or maximize their impact. You can see the same thing at work in fandom, where most fics receive a small percentage of views compared to a handful of juggernauts; it's certainly true on a microlevel with my own work--the graph of all my A03 stats almost perfectly matches the classic Black Swan curve.
Star Wars is THE classic example in my mind of unexpected success. Nobody expected it to make money - not the studio, not the actors, not George Lucas. And yet people loved it and still do to this day! Heck, even Harry Potter boggles my mind when you think about it, given how it's far from the first "British wizard at boarding school for magic" story by a long shot, and the prevailing wisdom of children's book publishers at the time was that 500+ page hardcovers would never sell.