C H A P T E R O N E

Remixing American Pop

Rap has been around for a while now, it’s really successful,

it’s powerful and still vibrant, but something else is going

to happen soon. . . . The potential is unlimited.

â€" B RYA N T U R N E R , founder of Priority Records, 1992

In 1989 Billboard magazine, the music industry’s most important trade publication, held a briefing devoted to improving the way it

collected sales data. Among the various people attending the meeting that day was a record industry executive named Michael Shalett. His

primary areas of expertise included information technology, market-

ing, and market research. As Shalett listened to the various ideas

being discussed, he could not believe what he was hearing. When the

briefing was over, he left convinced that the methods used by Billboard were substandard and unreliable.

Next, he turned to Michael Fine, one of the nation’s foremost re-

search professionals and pollsters. Fine had distinguished himself as president of George Fine Research, a full-service, national and inter-national market research firm adept at gathering public opinion. Es-

tablished in 1935, the company developed some of the most widely

used market research methodologies in the world. Exit polling, a

technique the company helped refine, changed the way political pro-

jections are made and how election night results are reported. The

collaboration between Shalett and Fine would have a similar ground-

breaking impact on the business of pop music.

The same year that Billboard held its briefing the annual Con-sumer Profile of the Recording Industry Association of America

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