The Urbanization of the Billboard Top 200 and Hot 100 Charts: How Soundscan Changed the Game

John Kellogg
Assistant Chair of the Music Business/Management Department
Berklee College of Music

    Resistance to Billboard’s recent incorporation of digital download sales and streaming data along with radio to determine weekly chart rankings on the Hot Country and R&B/Hip-Hop Song charts, was to be expected. Uproar over the magazine’s changes to chart methodology date back more than sixty years to its first publication of the Hot 100, a weekly chart that determines the most popular singles in America. However, the most controversial change occurred with the publication’s 1991 decision to incorporate Soundscan data in determining rankings on both the Top 200 Album and Hot 100 Singles charts.  While some experts predicted the change would alter the make-up of specific genres of music appearing on the weekly monitors, few had the foresight to project the significant increase in certain types of music hitting the top of the charts after the alteration to these most important measurements of popularity of American music.  Black music (R&B/Rap) and Country titles roared to the top echelons of both charts immediately thereafter.

    This paper will explore the severity of the change and its effects on the marketing, production and business plan decisions that emerged as a result thereof, and led to Black music dominating the charts for the next twenty years.

    The presentation will both explore the history of Billboard’s determination to change its methods in 1991 and, through an examination of both pre- and post-change data in charts, diagrams and empirical evidence, investigate the resulting changes in both the complexion of the artists and the content of popular music in the last decade of the 20th and first decade of 21st centuries.

Managerial Perspectives on New Product Development in Large Music Organizations

Paul Saintilan
Adjunct Professor
Australian Institute of Music

    Purpose – This international study explores managerial perceptions of new product development (NPD) in large music organisations. It particularly focuses on the degree to which NPD should be driven by customer insight and integrating audience preferences (customer orientation), or artistic conviction, leadership and artistic insight (product orientation). Marketing leaders, Artistic leaders and CEOs were interviewed to determine the perspective each group brings, and the way it manifests in terms of goals and priorities, perceptions of process, and interfunctional relations. This is a PhD project being prepared under the supervision of marketing and arts management academics in the Business and Law Faculty at Deakin University, Australia.
Design/methodology/approach - This is a qualitative, interpretative study that explores the perceptions of senior managers in the USA, UK and Australia. In-depth individual interviews were conducted with 24 senior managers in London, New York and Sydney. Half of the executives were working in major commercial record companies and half in nonprofit music organisations (such as orchestras). One third of the participants were Artistic leaders, one third Marketing leaders, and one third CEOs. Research participants included industry leaders who had managed several thousand employees.

    Findings – the study found evidence that product and customer orientations contributed to notable differences in perspective between Artistic and Marketing leaders, and contributed to perceived tension between the two functions, in both the commercial and nonprofit contexts. The study highlights the subtle and complex nature of integrating the voice of the artist and the voice of the audience into the NPD process in an arts context. There is some evidence that distinctive functional perspectives are being eroded.

    Originality/value – this international study provides a rare insight into perceptions of music managers in relation to NPD. It raises issues of relevance to other commercial creative industries such as design and fashion, and has relevance for research examining the reconciliation of aesthetic and market imperatives, and the growing professionalisation of marketing practice in arts and entertainment. In terms of practical implications, it makes explicit and conscious managerial experiences that may be implicit, personal and unstated. It provides insights which can assist interfunctional coordination.
Keywords –  product orientation, customer orientation, marketing department, artistic department, Artist & Repertoire Department, new product development, music organisation

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