Musical attributes, cultural dimensions, social media: Insights for marketing music to consumers

Cash-strapped music entrepreneurs use social media to establish deep connections with listeners but often lack resources to pursue marketing. Here, we present a disintermediated, integrated model (the DI model) to elicit culturally responsive marketing intelligence at little cost. It combines musical attributes (key, length, and tempo) of hit songs in eight diverse countries with their national cultural dimensions as defined by Hofstede's Values Survey Module and GLOBE, the 2004 Global Leadership and Behavior Effectiveness study. Correlational and regression analyses indicate that music attributes are more closely related to Hofstede than GLOBE but using more than one cultural model provides additional insights. Finally, we discuss the Strategic Intent Matrix, which provides guidance for individual music entrepreneurs who wish to pursue growth strategies with limited marketing resources.