SoundScan Rising

Now time and time again I have consistently talked about the importance of CD sales in the music industry. I have talked about how record labels follow sales statistics to a tee and base all of their time, efforts, and resources into making sure their pop hit sells the most and makes them the most money. Now as much as we all hate talking about corporate dealings, it is sometimes prudent to talk about its origins. Where did all this corporatizing begin and how and why did it originate? To understand any of that, we need to learn a bit about a little thing I like to call SoundScan.

In all actuality it is not something that I like to call SoundScan, it actually is called SoundScan. For those of you not aware of what it is, Nielsen SoundScan is the system created for the express purpose of accurately tracking music and music video product sales. It was thought up by marketing analysts Mike Fine and Mike Shalett back in the early '90s, March 1, 1991 to be exact. You see, before SoundScan came into being and was adopted by Nielsen Media Research, album sales were tracked in a fairly haphazard fashion with retailers having to venture a guess as to approximately how many units they moved then sending in their figures. As you can probably already tell, that method was fraught with errors in distinction and retailers committing fraud.

On May 25, 1991 the first Billboard charts were released using SoundScan sales data and days of those old methods were no more. It now worked in a way that had retailers track their cash registers figures and submit it electronically. They would track all music product barcodes scanned and the quantities sold on a weekly basis. SoundScan was designed to consolidate all of this data from millions of retailers and spit out rankings based on said data. Naturally, the more units a specific album sold, the higher the ranking said album would gain.

With a good portion of Nielsen SoundScan's clients being all major and many independent record labels, it is easy to see where labels get all of their sales data. Not getting it yet? Here is the main point I am trying to get across in talking about SoundScan: in the days before legitimate album sales tracking, sales were tracked horribly. More often than not, the numbers that record labels would end up getting were fairly far off from what the sales figures actually were. Yet without knowing which way was up and what color was purple, music was still produced, bought, and sold and the industry was progressing, if not thriving. Give record labels the real numbers, they start knowing where they can afford to cut corners and what they can sell "pop." So corporate label execs got more involved in the creative process and started tailoring the music to their own design, a design that sells. It is not a design based on value or lyrical content or even talent, the most obvious deciding factor. It is simply a design that will maximize profit. SoundScan was and still is the music industry's tool for acquiring the almighty dollar.


Source(s):

Cloonan, M., & Williamson, J. (2008). Popular music: Rethinking the music industry.

Byrne, D. (2007, December 18). David byrne's survival strategies for emerging artists — and
  megastars. Wired, (16.01), Retrieved from  
  http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne?currentPage=all

McCourt, T., & Rothenbuhler, E. (1997). Soundscan and the consolidation of control in the popular
  music industry. Media Culture & Society, 19(2), 201-218. Retrieved from http://mcs.sagepub.com/

Mellencamp, J. (2009, March 22). On my mind: the state of the music business. The Huffington Post.
  Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mellencamp/on-my-mind-the-state-of-t_b_177836.html

Nielsen soundscan. In (2009). Wikipedia Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_SoundScan

Phillips, C. (1991, December 8). Rock 'n' roll revolutionaries: soundscan's mike shalett and mike fine
  have shaken up the record industry with a radical concept. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from
  http://articles.latimes.com/1991-12-08/entertainment/ca-85_1_sales-figures