The use of bibliometrics for ranking the all-time greatest music artists

Abstract

This brief communication presents a novel adaptation of common bibliometric measures to provide a quantitative assessment of an artist's music catalog that incorporates both impact and productivity. Data from Billboard's weekly Hot 100™ music charts are used to rank the all-time greatest artists. Since the sorted data are increasing in value—that is, a number 1 hit is best—a transformation is applied to provide a convex, monotonically decreasing curve. Furthermore, since conventional bibliometrics result in several artists with identical measures, metrics inspired by the multidimensional $h$- and $g$-indices are used to rank the artists. We find that this approach provides a simple, yet unbiased, approach for ranking the all-time greatest music artists.