# Two singers. One is just ten percent better.

- Series: [The Better Guess](https://miu.fm/thebetterguess.md)
- Premieres: 2026-11-12
- Page: https://miu.fm/thebetterguess/two-singers-one-is-just-ten-percent-better-once-records

## Story

Two singers. One is just ten percent better. Once records exist, does the better one earn ten percent more, or almost everything?

Around 1801 the soprano Elizabeth Billington was said to earn ten thousand pounds or more in a single London season. But a voice only reaches the people inside the hall. In 1890 the economist Alfred Marshall wrote that so long as that was so, no singer was likely to earn much more.

In 1981 Sherwin Rosen worked out what changes when one performance can reach everyone. A string of average singers doesn't add up to one great performance, and a performer works about as hard for ten listeners as for a thousand. In our simulation, a thousand listeners split five hundred each between two halls; with one record that reaches everyone, nine in ten pick the singer who is ten percent better.

Real concerts went that way: the top one percent of touring acts took 26 percent of concert ticket money in 1982 and 56 percent by 2003. Not all of it is talent: in one online music experiment, success was only partly decided by quality.

Rosen wrote of her: "Imagine her income had radio and phonograph records existed in 1801!"

The two singers and the thousand listeners are our simulation (tastes vary about 5 percent; with more varied tastes the better singer wins less). The concert shares are ticket revenue, not income.

So, which did you pick?

Sources: Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, 1890 (8th edition, 1920); Sherwin Rosen, "The Economics of Superstars", American Economic Review, 1981; Marie Connolly and Alan B. Krueger, "Rockonomics: The Economics of Popular Music", NBER Working Paper 11282, 2005; Salganik, Dodds and Watts, Science, 2006.
Sounds: our own, made in code (earshot, CC0).

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