Networks of Music Groups as Success Predictors

More than 4,600 non-academic music groups emerged in the USSR and post-Soviet independent nations in 1960--2015, performing in 275 genres. Some of the groups became legends and survived for decades, while others vanished and are known now only to select music history scholars. We built a network of the groups based on sharing at least one performer. We discovered that major network measures serve as reasonably accurate predictors of the groups' success. The proposed network-based success exploration and prediction methods are transferable to other areas of arts and humanities that have medium- or long-term team-based collaborations.