Billboard Redefines What’s a Hit Record : Country Wins Big on New Computerized Chart but Some Stores, Record Companies Rap Results

It’s no wonder the record industry is abuzz after country star Garth Brooks’ “No Fences” album suddenly jumped from No. 26 to No. 4 on Billboard magazine’s weekly sales chart--for years the industry’s most important barometer of national record sales.

New albums frequently race up the charts, but “No Fences” has been in the stores for nine months. During that time, it chalked up an impressive 3 million sales, though it spent most of the duration in the 20s on the charts.

At the same time, dozens of recent releases dropped dramatically on this week’s chart--Fishbone’s “The Reality of My Surroundings” plunged from No. 49 to 182, while Bob Dylan’s “The Bootleg Series” fell from No. 90 out of the top 200.

So what happened?

Billboard magazine, the industry’s leading trade journal, has radically altered the way it figures what records America is buying. The magazine--whose chart rankings are to records as Nielsen ratings are to TV shows--says the changes more accurately report actual album, CD and cassette sales across the country. Critics--and there are plenty in the recording industry--say the new system is too heavily weighted toward Middle-American tastes and undercuts newer, less mainstream artists.

Both sides agree, however, that Billboard’s rankings are important in the industry on both practical and prestige levels.

Not only are artists’ egos affected by their positioning on the charts, but retail stores and radio stations rely on the charts when buying new product or adding it to playlists.

Because of this influence, record companies have often tried to manipulate the charts to create the impression that new albums or new artists are suddenly hot. This impression can help an artist gain tour bookings, television guest appearances and radio play.

Geoff Mayfield, associate director of retail research at Billboard, said Wednesday that the new high-tech method of measuring sales is in part designed to block outside manipulation.

For 30 years, Billboard relied on a system in which store employees submitted weekly sales figures, but the magazine now employs a computer-based system that allegedly eliminates the human factor.

Under the new system, developed by SoundScan, a New York-based research firm, figures are entered into a computer every time a clerk runs the album through the bar code scanner at the sales register.

“The SoundScan system is more specific and is not subject to hype,” Mayfield said. “Even in a perfect world, the old system allowed for some unavoidable inaccuracies.”

But the system--which currently tracks about 40% of the records sold in the United States--is already under attack by the WEA Group, the Los Angeles-based distribution conglomerate that includes Warner Brothers, Elektra and Atlantic Records.

In a memo to group company executives, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, a top WEA Group official attacked the SoundScan method, saying the chart would result in a “complete loss of credibility.”

However, Mike Shalett, chief operating officer of SoundScan, believes the system is the best on the market.

“In the past, a store clerk or a manager could make some (subjective) decisions about what to report to the charts. There was great room for bias.”

Billboard’s Mayfield said the magazine was aware that record companies sometimes attempted to “influence” what individual stores reported by sponsoring contests and offering gifts--from television sets to free vacations--in exchange for making a new release appear to be selling faster than it really was.

But the problems with the old system went beyond the “manipulation factor,” he added--and that accounts for this sudden upsurge in country albums.

Other albums by country artists that also surged upward this week: Reba McEntire’s 9-month-old “Rumor Has It” (50 to 39), the Judds’ 6-month-old “Love Can Build a Bridge” (98 to 62) and Travis Tritt’s 6-month-old “Country Club” (152 to 70).

Under the old reporting system, said Mayfield, a store clerk might just report Brooks’ or some other country artist’s sales on Billboard’s country album tally sheet, thus causing his showing on the more prestigious pop chart to be lower than it should have been. Similarly, R&B;, rap and classical artists may have under-reported over the years on the pop chart, Mayfield believes.

Another reason that could account for the dramatic country upswing this week, SoundScan critics say, is that the new Billboard system draws too much of its sample from chains in the Midwest, where country music is a bigger seller than it is on the East and West coasts.

Data for the new chart is generated from a computer network linked into about 2,300 retail outlets representing some of the nation’s largest retail chains--including Camelot, Musicland, Music Plus, Sound Warehouse and Trans World Music Corp. So far, the sole rack jobber included in the tabulations is the Handlemann Company, which services more than 4,000 mass merchandise locations.

The concept is that the bar scan precisely counts each item sold. But critics of SoundScan complain that the sales data used to compile the charts is distorted.

Because the figures sampled come exclusively from major retail chains and rack jobbers--companies that frequently stock only proven sellers, critics say that albums by new and alternative pop artists--typically carried at independent record dealers--are being excluded from the tally.

SoundScan officials say they hope to address this deficiency by adding about 300 independent stores to the sample within the next three months. But insiders complain that the research firm intends to recoup costs incurred from hooking up the independents by charging record companies hefty subscription fees for weekly updates of national sales data to be provided in advance of the Billboard chart listings.

Ken Barnes, senior vice president and editor of Radio & Records, a Billboard competitor that rejected an offer in 1990 to join forces with SoundScan, said the system may be particularly bad for new and developing artists.

“I think it’s going to make it much tougher for record companies to market new artists,” Barnes said. “The SoundScan system is likely to weigh in favor of older artists and safer, more conservative albums.”

More than a dozen new and developing WEA artists disappeared from the chart in this week’s tabulations. Anticipating the fallout, WEA officials met with SoundScan’s Shalett last Thursday to inform him that WEA may “seek out other sources of information which could more accurately trace the course and development of (WEA) product,” according to the memo.

‘While in theory, we all would like a tamper-proof chart,” the memo concluded, “in its present form, the chart has no value.”

SoundScan’s Shalett refuted criticisms that his system might damage the careers of new and developing acts.

He said that the system not only allows the industry to study chart action, it provides record companies that subscribe to the firm’s management information package with accurate sales data pinpointing every transaction as it transpires across the nation--allowing labels to better measure the impact of touring, video play and advertising with regard to new and developing acts.

“I do not think SoundScan will a negative effect on new artists,” Shalett said. “In fact, I believe it will be a boon to their development.”