The Future of Record Research

Vinnie:

Many thanks for checking in with the update. Always great to hear directly from someone that provides current & accurate info.

As a country fan I'm glad to hear that an update for the Country Singles book is in the works. However I do have a couple of suggestions regarding country chart publications:

1) The Billboard Country Annual has not been updated since 1997. It has been mentioned in past threads that book was not a big seller. But perhaps a print-on-demand version might make it more feasible as well as possible future online availability. Few of today's country radio programmers play pre-2000 music so an updated book extending through 2025 would be most welcome.

2) A Radio & Records Country Chart book would be most welcome. As someone that worked in radio, I found the R&R chart often reflected reality more accurately than other trades especially during the 80's & 90's. That chart info has not been aggregated anywhere so far.

Thank you for your consideration and sincere gratitude for continuing the excellent Record Research legacy.

And God Bless Paul Haney for his always superb work!

As the originator of this thread, it is about time for me to respond! First, let me thank Vinnie for keeping Record Research going. Since I purchased my first Record Research book over 30 years ago, I have always looked forward to receiving notifications via snail mail, e-mail and the Record Research website of new chart books to add to or new editions of past purchases to update on my bookshelf…and I look forward to continuing to do so for (sorry, Linda Ronstadt) a long, long time.

For books already published, I would like to see the AC/Adult Top 40 book updated. It has been 20 years since the last edition. Although the AC chart has become painfully stagnant in that time, Adult Top 40 has become more distinct from AC with greater song diversity, selection and turnover. In the new edition, I would recommend separate sections for each chart or at least separate columns to better differentiate the peaks of a song as well as an artist’s history on each individual chart. The Country Albums book is nearly 20 years overdue for an update. My wish for this update would be to include chart data from the Country Catalog Albums (1991-2020) and Country Album Sales chart (2017-2020). The latter chart was created when Billboard converted the Country Albums chart to the same units (sales and streaming) used by then for the Billboard 200 and included many albums that sold, but did not stream, well usually from more veteran artists.

My biggest wish is to finally have charts other than Billboard comprehensively researched. Record Research has thus far published Pop books for Cashbox, Gavin and R&R as well as Pop and Country books for Record World. Each of these publications also featured other charts for singles and/or albums in many other formats. As these publications have been out of print for decades, the average person is likely unaware there were ever any music charts other than those published by Billboard. The charts from these publications would be perfectly suited to an online database that true chart followers and historians would be interested in accessing and researching. The database could also be a resource for charts that Billboard no longer publishes and for which data is no longer available on its website. For example, when Billboard discontinued its Singles Sales charts, all of the chart histories including those by format for these Sales charts became inaccessible to subscribers.

I look forward to seeing what Record Research will offer in the years ahead. If you need assistance in chart research or ideas for new publications or the format and content of existing books, it would be my sincere privilege to offer my help and share my ideas with you.