Playback and Payback series; (part 11) charting the course

In this article, we explore the experiences and perspectives of one music industry expert and author Hank Bordowitz on how changes in the charts changed the music business, and he goes on to state;

One of my early full-time professional experiences in the music business was an internship at the late, lamented trade periodical Record World. It came about because of a summer job I had at a radio production company in the same building. I went up the elevator at 1700 Broadway and introduced myself to the editor, Mike Sigman. After I explained the concept of an internship to him (basically “slave labor with an educational component, though you can pay my train fare and feed me”), we struck a deal. I’m proud to say that for as long as the magazine existed afterward, it had an intern from the journalism department at Rutgers.

I learned a hell of a lot about journalism, magazine production, and the mechanics of the music business during my time there. Some of it I learned the hard way (like by not quite twigging exactly where ASCAP got its money – it sounded like a protection racket to me at the time), some by observation, some by interference, and some by actually being told, “This is the way things work.” (I also met Michael Zilkha through Record World, and wound up being signed as an artist to his Ze Records imprint about a year later, for my hot minute as a recording artist).

As one of my main jobs at the magazine I helped to gather information on the charts every week. The chart department in New York consisted of four people (including me). We also had our correspondents in the L.A. office. Every person in charge of a specific genre (the dance music columnist and R&B editor, for example) was responsible for compiling his or her department’s chart information.

I helped with the jazz and dance music charts and gathered information for the main sales chart as well. This involved calling various retailers, radio stations, and clubs and entering their sales information or playlists onto a graph, with the #1 song or record getting 10 points, #2 getting 9 and so on down the line. A similar method was used about a half mile down Broadway and across the street, where Billboard had its offices.

The department spent Monday and Tuesday compiling the charts. This often involved working until close to midnight every Tuesday. The heads of the chart department went into their offices and closed their doors and got on a conference call with the Los Angeles offices until they had settled on the numbers.

On Wednesday, we tallied up our information and created the actual charts. One of my jobs, every Wednesday afternoon, was to copy the charts and distribute them to everyone in the office. At 4 P.M., we sat down and fielded calls from consultants, record companies, managers, radio station groups, and other journalists requesting the coming week’s chart numbers on specific albums (“Last week it was #4 on the pop chart. It was #1 on the dance chart?”) or Top 10s.

What I inferred from the closed doors in the offices of the chart heads, especially after hearing all the indistinct arguing that seeped through, was that these charts, while mathematical, were also a process of compromise. Even the information-gathering process didn’t strike me as thoroughly accurate.

What if the retailer didn’t give precise numbers? I would learn several years later, as a record-store manager for a fair-sized chain of stores improvise their inventory counts. If the information was compromised even at that early stage of the gathering, how accurate could the final tally really be?

For example, there was great consternation and gnashing of teeth in the chart department the first week of October 1979, when the Eagles’ The Long Run, their long-awaited follow-up to Hotel California, came out. All indications said that it should debut at #1, but that just didn’t happen. The conventional wisdom at the music business trades said that albums needed a slow build, a climb up the charts.

That’s what made every week in the charts exciting. It was kind of like a horse race (a sport that a surprising number of music business people enjoyed – I know of one who told me about losing a publishing company at the track one sunny spring afternoon). In the end, the sales were too strong to ignore – the chart department felt they had no choice but to debut The Long Run on the chart at #1.