David Bruce Murray
Dec 07, 2007
Food For Thought|Sad But True
SoundScan Sticker Shock
Does anyone care to venture a guess as to how much a blogger (me) would have to pay to merely view SoundScan’s raw data? I’ll go ahead and tell you. It’s $3000 per year…just to look. That three grand would only be to satisfy my own curiosity, though. I can’t run the figures and publish a chart for that amount. Oh no…three big ones isn’t enough to cover that.
If I want to license publishing rights to a (1) Soundscan chart and publish it here on my blog, it’s $5000 per year.
Where is the incentive for anyone to publish a chart based on sales data when the entity that (I presume) “owns” that data wants an arm, a leg, and both of your kidneys?
If Mickey Gamble’s public and other privately emailed comments hadn’t already convinced me that the Southern Gospel industry will continue to rely solely on radio airplay reports for charts, this sure did. Oh well, I knew I’d always wonder if I didn’t ask. Now I know. And I thought movie popcorn was outrageously priced…
