Sound Matters: An Experimental Study of Vocal Performance and Economic Behaviour

Björn A. Kuchinke; Jürgen Rösch

doi:10.2478/ijmbr-2026-0001

.blurhash-client-img { display: none !important; }

Sound Matters: An Experimental Study of Vocal Performance and Economic Behaviour

International Journal of Music Business Research

AHEAD OF PRINT

By: Björn A. Kuchinke and Jürgen Rösch

Open Access

|Mar 2026

Figures & Tables

Comparison of shoot to thrill vs. long way to the top based on spotify stats and emotional arcs.

The distributions of offers in the ‘High Voltage’ treatments (upper part) and the replica of Oxoby’s (2009) (lower part).

The distributions of MAOs in the Bon Scott and Brian Johnson treatments for ‘High Voltage’ (upper part) and the replica of Oxoby (2009) lower part. MAOs, minimum acceptable offer.

Summary statistics and Wilcoxon rank-sum tests for final payouts_

Final payout
Treatment	#	Mean	Std. dev.	Min	Max	Rank-sum
T1 Bon Scott ‘High Voltage’	49	4.1837	2.690055	0	10	p = 0.0014
T2 Brian Johnson ‘High Voltage’	50	2.4000	3.238795	0	10
T3 Bon Scott ‘It’s a Long Way’	45	2.4444	3.166268	0	10	p = 0.1860
T4 Brian Johnson ‘Shoot to Thrill’	40	3.3250	3.276861	0	10

Overview of treatments and song characteristics_

Treatment 1	Treatment 2	Treatment 3	Treatment 4
Song: High voltage	Song: High voltage	Song: It’s a long way […]	Song: Shoot to thrill
Singer: Bon Scott	Singer: Brian Johnson	Singer: Bon Scott	Singer: Brian Johnson
Year: 1976	Year: 1991	Year: 1976	Year: 1980
Album: If you want blood you’ve got it	Album: Live	Album: High voltage	Album: Back in black
Popularity: 0.35	Popularity: 0.38	Popularity: 0.74	Popularity: 0.75
Acoustics: 0.00	Acoustics: 0.00	Acoustics: 0.133	Acoustics: 0
Danceability: 0.55	Danceability: 0.58	Danceability: 0.456	Danceability: 0.475
Energy: 0.919	Energy: 0.944	Energy: 0.863	Energy: 0.904
Instrumentalness: 0.602	Instrumentalness: 0.777	Instrumentalness: 0.054	Instrumentalness: 0.088
Liveness: 0.935	Liveness: 0.952	Liveness: 0.055	Liveness: 0.396
Speechiness: 0.06	Speechiness: 0.046	Speechiness: 0.089	Speechiness: 0.075
Valence: 0.564	Valence: 0.546	Valence: 0.532	Valence: 0.48

Summary statistics and Wilcoxon rank-sum tests for all Bon Scott vs_ Brian Johnson treatments_

	Observations	Bon Scott	Brian Johnson	Rank-sum
	Observations	94	90	Rank-sum
Offers	Mean	5.9574	5.5778	p = 0.4209
	Std. Dev	2.3137	2.0824
	Min.	1	0
	Max.	10	10
MAO	Mean	4.8511	5.4222	p = 0.0503
	Std. Dev	2.2431	2.1462
	Min.	0	1
	Max.	10	10
Payout	Mean	3.3511	2.8111	p = 0.1660
	Std. Dev	3.0399	3.2702
	Min.	0	0
	Max.	10	10

Results of randomly chosen 18 participants in each treatment with 100 repetitions—differences were tested with the Wilcoxon rank-sum test2_

Comparison	Measure	# of Significant Results (p < 0.05)	Direction of Difference	Singer associated with greater Economic efficiency(following Oxoby 2009)
T1 vs. T2 ‘High Voltage’	Offers	1	Bon Scott < Brian Johnson	Brian Johnson
	MAO	26	Bon Scott < Brian Johnson	Bon Scott
T3 vs. T4 Original songs	Offers	8	Bon Scott > Brian Johnson	Bon Scott
	MAO	1	Bon Scott > Brian Johnson	Brian Johnson

Summary statistics and Wilcoxon rank-sum tests for MAO

MAO
Treatment	#	Mean	Std. dev.	Min	Max	Rank-sum
T1 Bon Scott ‘High Voltage’	49	4.0408	1.5937	1	7	p = 0.0091
T2 Brian Johnson ‘High Voltage’	50	5.3200	2.4532	1	10
T3 Bon Scott ‘It’s a Long Way’	45	5.7333	2.5172	0	10	p = 0.9655
T4 Brian Johnson ‘Shoot to Thrill’	40	5.5500	1.7090	2	10

Acoustic feature comparison of vocal performances by Brian Johnson and Bon Scott on High Voltage, extracted using Demucs for source separation and Librosa for signal analysis_

High voltage performed by	Loudness	Energy	Tempo	Key	Harmony	Flatness	Spectral bandwidth	Speech rate proxy
Brian Johnson	0.026608	0.204217	143.55	3	0.27718	0.07267	2,359.38	4,502.99
Bon Scott	0.04949	0.204189	136	5	0.274313	0.079435	2,276.34	4,502.38

Summary statistics and Wilcoxon rank-sum tests for offers_

Offers
Treatment		#	Mean	Std. dev.	Min	Max	Rank-sum
High voltage	T1 Bon Scott ‘High Voltage’	49	5.694	2.2565	1	10	p = 0.9776
High voltage	T2 Brian Johnson ‘High Voltage’	50	5.700	2.1689	2	10
Replica of Oxoby (2009)	T3 Bon Scott ‘It’s a Long Way […]’	45	6.244	2.3660	3	10	p = 0.2760
Replica of Oxoby (2009)	T4 Brian Johnson ‘Shoot to Thrill’	40	5.425	1.9857	0	10

References

Authors

Metrics

Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ijmbr-2026-0001 | Journal eISSN: 2227-5789

Journal RSS Feed

Language: English

Submitted on: May 25, 2025

Accepted on: Aug 20, 2025

Published on: Mar 25, 2026

Published by: International Music Business Research Association (IMBRA)

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Publication frequency: 2 issues per year

Related subjects:

Cultural studies,

Media studies,

Media theory,

Business and economics,

Business management,

Industries,

Entertainment industry, media, publishing companies,

Cultural management,

Social sciences,

Sociology,

Sociology of economy, organizations, and industry

© 2026 Björn A. Kuchinke, Jürgen Rösch, published by International Music Business Research Association (IMBRA)
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

AHEAD OF PRINT

Sound Matters: An Experimental Study of Vocal Performance and Economic Behaviour

Figures & Tables

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Summary statistics and Wilcoxon rank-sum tests for final payouts_

Overview of treatments and song characteristics_

Summary statistics and Wilcoxon rank-sum tests for all Bon Scott vs_ Brian Johnson treatments_

Results of randomly chosen 18 participants in each treatment with 100 repetitions—differences were tested with the Wilcoxon rank-sum test2_

Summary statistics and Wilcoxon rank-sum tests for MAO

Acoustic feature comparison of vocal performances by Brian Johnson and Bon Scott on High Voltage, extracted using Demucs for source separation and Librosa for signal analysis_

Summary statistics and Wilcoxon rank-sum tests for offers_

Paradigm

My account