With (Jose Oros and Richard Randall) - Help That Hurts: The Creativity Cost of LLM Ideation in Music Composition

Generative AI is transforming creative industries, particularly music, and raising questions about artistic practice and creator roles. Text-to-music systems can generate full songs from prompts, yet their impact on human creativity and quality remains unclear. This paper analyzes how AI assistance shapes the creative process and outcomes in music. We conduct a randomized controlled trial with musically trained individuals who compose an original 15-second piano melody, assigning them to either an AI-ideation group or a no-AI control. External evaluators of varied musical experience rate each melody on perceived creativity, musicality, and enjoyment. On average, we find that average listeners rate the melodies generated under the treatment condition as less creative. Furthermore, access to the AI changes stylistic choices, which are perceived as less creative by evaluators.

With (Nikhil George, Ramayya Krishnan) From Posting to Prediction: Building Validated Workforce Analytics

Despite widespread adoption of Human Capital Management systems, organizations' data. We develop a methodology that systematically measures how well employees’ current skills match the requirements of new job openings by analyzing the text of job postings. Using four years of HCM data from a major financial services firm, we create skill-fit scores and validate these measures against actual hiring decisions from 1,034 internal applications. Our skill-fit measure robustly predicts hiring success: applicants with one standard deviation higher skill fit are 2.25 times more likely to be selected when competing for identical positions. This demonstrates that job postings contain rich, decision-relevant skill signals previously untapped by organizations. These validated skill-fit measures reveal workforce patterns such as 14.8% of employees facing limited skill-aligned opportunities and 54.9% of unsuccessful applicants missing suitable alternatives. Our methodology provides a replicable framework for developing validated skill-fit measures from readily available HCM data without additional data collection or validation effort, creating a foundation for deeper workforce analytics.

• B Danaher, J Hersh, M smith, R Telang (2025), "Fighting Online Illegal Activities", Communication of the ACM (forthcoming)

• R Telang, Z Hydari (2025), "Balancing Secrecy and Transparency in Bug Bounty Programs", Communication of the ACM (forthcoming)

• S Somanchi, V Kanuri, R Telang (2025), "Mitigating Churn After Online Financial Fraud: The Value of Blame Attribution" forthcoming.  Production and Operations Management (forthcoming)

• Liron Sivan, Rahul Telang (2025), "Movie Sentiment and Home Entertainment Revenue",  Journal of Cultural Economics (forthcoming)

• S Sharma, R Telang, A Zentner (2025). "The Impact of Digitization on Print Book Sales: Analysis using Genre Exposure Heterogeneity", MSOM (Manufacturing and Service Operation Management) - forthcoming

• Saharsh Agarwal, Deepa Mani, Rahul Telang (2023), “The Impact of Ride-hailing Services on Congestion: Evidence from Indian Cities”, 25(3), 862-883, MSOM (Manufacturing and Service Operation Management).  [PAPER]

• A Aziz, H Li, R Telang (2022), “The Consequences of Rating Inflation on Platforms: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment”, 34(2), 590-608, Information Systems Research. [PAPER]

•  R Belo, T Frick, R Telang (2023), “Incentive Misalignments in Programmatic Advertising: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment”, 69(3), 1665-1686, Management Science. [PAPER]

•  J Sim, Daegon Cho, Y Hwang, and R Telang (2022), “The Virus Shook the Streaming Star: Estimating the COVID-19 Impact on Music Consumption”, Marketing Science, 21 (1), 19-32. [PAPER]

• Rahul Ladhania, A M. Haviland, A Venkat, R Telang, and J M. Pines (2021), “The Effect of Medicaid Expansion on the Nature of New Enrollees’ Emergency Department Use”, Medical Care Research and Review, 78 (1), 24–35. [PAPER]

•  B Danaher, J Hersh, M Smith, R Telang (2020), “The Effect of Piracy Website Blocking on Consumer Behavior”, MIS Quarterly, 44(2), 631-659.

• Liron Sivan, M Smith, R Telang (2019), “Do Search Engines Influence Media Piracy? Evidence from Randomized Experiment”, MIS Quarterly, 42(4), 1143-1154.

• Zia Hydari Rahul Telang, Bill Marella (2019), “Saving Patient Ryan — Can Advanced Electronic Medical Records Make Patient Care Safer?”, Management Science, 65(5), 2041-2059. [PAPER]

• Rajiv Garg, Rahul Telang (2018), “To Be or Not to Be Linked: Online social Networks and Job Search by Unemployed Workforce”, Management Science, 64(8), 3926-3941. [PAPER]

• Rahul Telang, Joel Waldfogel (2018), “Piracy and New Product Creation: A Bollywood Story”, Information Economics and Policy, 43, 1-11. [PAPER]

• Haijing Hao, R Padman, R Telang, B Sun (2018), "Quantifying the Impact of Social Influence on the Information Technology Implementation Process by physicians: A Hierarchical Bayesian Learning Approach" Information Systems Research, 29(1), 25-41. [PAPER]

• B Danaher, M Smith, R Telang (2017), “Copyright Enforcement in the Digital Age: Empirical Evidence and Policy Implications”, Communication of the ACM, 60(2), 68-75. [PAPER]

• Maurya A, Telang R (2017), “Bayesian Multi-View Models for Member-Job Matching and Personalized Skill Recommendations”, IEEE International Conference On Big Data (BIG DATA), 1193-1202. [PAPER]

• Pedro Ferreira, Miguel Matos, Michael Smith, Rahul Telang, (2016), “Culling the herding: Using real world randomized experiments to measure social bias with known costly goods”, Management Science, 62(9), 2463-2580. [PAPER]

• Adjerid Idris; Acquisti A, Telang R, Padman R, Adler-Milstein, J (2016), “The Impact of Privacy Regulation and Technology Incentives: The Case of Health Information Exchanges”, Management Science, 62(4), 1042-1063. [PAPER]

• Gong, Jing, Smith, Michael D, Telang, Rahul (2015). “Substitution or Promotion? The Impact of Price Discounts on Cross-Channel Sales of Digital Movies”, 91(2), Journal of Retailing, 343-357. [PAPER]

• Telang Rahul (2015), “Policy Framework for Data Breaches”, IEEE Security and Privacy, 13 (1), 77-79. [PAPER]

• Zia Hydari Rahul Telang, Bill Marella (2015), “Electronic Health Records and Patient Safety”, Communication of the ACM, 58 (11), 30-32.

• B. Danaher, Y Huang, M Smith, R Telang (2014), “An empirical Analysis of Digital Music Bundling Strategies” 60 (6), Management Science, 1413-33. [PAPER]

• Anuj Kumar, Michael Smith, Rahul Telang (2014), “Information Discovery and Long Tail of Motion Picture Content”, MIS Quarterly, 18(4), 1057-1078. [PAPER]

• B Danaher, M Smith, R Telang (2014), “Piracy and Copyright Enforcement Mechanism”, Innovation Policy and the Economy, Vol (14), NBER. 

• B Danaher, M D Smith, R Telang, S Chen, “The Effect of Graduated Response Anti-Piracy Laws on Music Sales: Evidence from an Event Study in France”, Journal of Industrial Economics, 62(3), 541-553. [PAPER]

• Rajiv Garg, Rahul Telang (2013), “Inferring App demand from publicly available data”, MIS Quarterly, 37(4)

-This paper was featured in a story in Post-Gazette

•  Rodrigo Belo, Pedro Ferreira, Rahul Telang (2013), “Impact of Broadband in School: Evidence from Portugal”, Management Science, 60(2). 265-282. [Lead Article] [PAPER]

• Anuj Kumar, Rahul Telang (2012), “Does the Web decrease Customer Service Cost? An Empirical analysis”, Information Systems Research (ISR), 23(3), 721-737. [PAPER]

• S. Wattal, R. Telang, T. Mukhopadhyay, P. Boatwright (2012), “What’s in a “name”? Impact of Use of Customer Information in Email Advertisement”, Information Systems Research, 23(3), 679-697. [PAPER]

• Anuj Kumar, Rahul Telang (2011), “Product Customization and Customer Service Costs: An Empirical Analysis”, forthcoming, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM), 13 (3), 347-360. [PAPER]

• S. Romanosky, R. Telang, A. Acquisti (2011), “Do Data Breach Disclosure Laws Reduce Identity Theft?”, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM), 30 (2), 256-286. [PAPER]

• B Danaher, S Dhanasobhon, M Smith, R. Telang (2010), “Converting Pirates without Cannibalizing Purchasers: The Impact of Digital Distribution on Physical Sales and Internet Piracy”, Marketing Science, 29(6), 1138:1151.  [PAPER]

• M. D. Smith, R. Telang “Piracy or Promotion? The Impact of Broadband Internet   Penetration on DVD Sales”, Information Economics and Policy, 22(4), 289-298. [PAPER]

• Michael Smith, Rahul Telang (2010), “Competing with Free: The Impact of Movie Broadcasting on DVD Sales and Internet Piracy”, MIS Quarterly, 33(2), 321-338. [PAPER]

• Arora, C. Forman, A. Nandkumar, R. Telang (2010), “Competition and patching of security vulnerabilities: An empirical analysis”, Information Economics and Policy, (10), 164-177. [PAPER]

• Arora, R. Krishnan, R. Telang, Y. Yang (2010) "An Empirical Analysis of Software Vendors’ Patch Release Behavior: Impact of Vulnerability Disclosure", Information Systems Research (ISR), 21(1), 115-132, [PAPER]

• S. Kim, R. Telang, B. Vogt, R. Krishnan (2010), “Empirical Analysis of Mobile Voice and SMS Service: A Structural Model”, 56(2). 234-252, Management Science. [PAPER]

• Sunil Wattal, Rahul Telang, Tridas Mukhopadhyay (2009), "Information Personalization in a Two-Dimensional Product Differentiation Model”, Journal of MIS, 26(2), 69-95. [PAPER]

• Ashish Arora, Rahul Telang, Hao Xu (2008), “Optimal Policy for Software Vulnerability Disclosure," Management Science, 54(4), 642-656. [PAPER]

• Rahul Telang, Sunil Wattal (2007), “An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Software Vulnerability Announcements on Firm Stock Price”, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 33 (8), 544-557. [PAPER]

• R Krishnan, M D. Smith, Z. Tang, R. Telang (2007) “Digital Business Models for Peer-to-Peer Networks: Analysis and Economic Issues”, Review of Network Economics, 6(2), 194-213.  [PAPER]

• Anindya Ghose, Michael Smith, Rahul Telang (2006), "Internet Exchanges for Used Books: An Empirical Analysis of Product Cannibalization and Welfare Impact", Information Systems Research (ISR), 17(1), 3-19, [Lead Article] [PAPER]

-          An article about this paper appeared in The New York Times article.

-          Won the runner-up best published paper award in ISR

• S Bhattacharjee, R Gopal, K Lertwachara, J Marsden, R Telang (2006), “The Effect of Digital Sharing Technologies on Music Markets: A Survival Analysis of Albums on Ranking Charts”, Management Science, 53(10), 1359-1374. [Lead Article] [PAPER]

• Ashish Arora, Anand Nandkumar, Rahul Telang (2006), “Does Information Security attack frequency increase with Vulnerability disclosure? - An Empirical Analysis”, Information Systems Frontier, 8(5), 350-362. [PAPER]

• Ashish Arora, Jonathan Caulkins, Rahul Telang (2006), "Sell First, Fix Later: Impact of Patching on Software Quality", Management Science (Research Note), 52(3), 465-471. [PAPER]

• Anindya Ghose, Rahul Telang, Ramayya Krishnan (2005), "Impact of Electronic Secondary Markets on Information Goods Supply Chain, Journal of MIS (JMIS), 22(2), 91-120. [PAPER]

• Rahul Telang, Tridas Mukhopadhyay (2005), "Drivers of Web Portal Use", Electronic Commerce Research and Applications. 4(1): 46-62. [PAPER]

• Karthik Kannan, Rahul Telang (2005), "Market For Software vulnerabilities? Think Again", Management Science, 51(5), 726-740. [PAPER]

• Ashish Arora, Rahul Telang (2005), "Economics of Software Vulnerability Disclosure", IEEE Security and Privacy, 3 (1), 20-25. [PAPER]

• Ashish Arora, D Hall, C. A. Pinto, D Ramsey, R Telang (2004), "Measuring the Risk Based Value of IT Security Solutions", IEEE IT Professional, 6(6), 35-42.

• Robert E. Kraut, Shyam Sunder, Rahul Telang, James Morris (2005), "Pricing to Solve the Problem of Spam", Human-Computer Interaction, 20, 195-223. [PAPER]

• Rahul Telang, Peter Boatwright, Tridas Mukhopadhyay (2004), "A Mixture Model for Internet Search Engine Visits", Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), 41(2), 206-214. [PAPER]

• Rahul Telang, Uday Rajan, Tridas Mukhopadhyay (2004), "The Market Structure for Internet Search Engines", Journal of MIS (JMIS), 21(2), 137-160. [PAPER]

• Ramayya Krishnan, Michael Smith, Rahul Telang (2004), "The Economics of Peer to Peer Networks", Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application (JITTA), 5(3), 31-44. [PAPER]