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.

— 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

Bill-

board 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

33