Chuck Klosterman uses "math" to determine the value of rock musicians.

cafreemacafreema
edited June 2011 in Diversions
As a baseball fanatic and a stat geek I've enjoyed the development over the last decade or so of so called 'advanced metrics' that have brought statistics far beyond the traditional batting average, home runs, and rbi. One of these stats is VORP or Value Over Replacement Player. This stat attempts to determine how much value a particular player has when compared to an imaginary mediocre replacement. The stat has limits (primarily in its attempts to include defense), but it's an interesting exercise.

Well, Chuck Klosterman has now developed Value Over Replacement Musician (VORM): Link.

VORM has faaaar more issues than VORP (seriously I'm one of the biggest Mats fans you'll find, but to say they have an established value nearly double Husker Du is crazy talk Chuckles), but it's kind of a fun article to read if for no other reason than to learn that Klosterman thinks Spacehog has the same established value as any semisuccessful, but unsigned, bar band, and this value is still higher than The Doors, Joy Division, Iron & WIne, and Spoon.

Craig

Comments

  • Dr. MutexDr. Mutex
    edited June 2011
    That is so deeply flawed I'm not sure where to start. The main problem is that the musician's value is heavily affected by the size of the group. If I add some of Klosterman's hypothetical random average musicians to a band, the lead singer's value drops even if the new guys just stand on the stage and pretend to play. A better measure of a musician's value to a group is how long you would expect to spend finding a suitable replacement. Even so, that won't tell you anything about e.g. one lead singer relative to other lead singers except at the extremes of the range, no matter what number you pull out of your ass to multiply it by.
  • greggreg
    I'd be interested how this works with a band like the E Street Band - how can one, for example, place a value on Clarence Clemons contributions in developing the success of Bruce Springsteen? Unlike football (soccer) teams, it is not possible to transfer in a player in the same way....
  • amclark2amclark2
    Personally I'd give Klosterman a pretty high VORW. Very few people, and even fewer living people, could pull of making something like that an enjoyable read.

    @greg: See footnote 1; bands that are mostly about 1 person, i.e. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, don't work.
  • greggreg
    I admit it - I didn't read the article!
  • Dr. MutexDr. Mutex
    @greg: your gain.
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