西洋音樂告示牌

Until Friday last week (6/18), Jewel was happy (supposed to be?) with her new album Sweet And Wild debuted at #10 on the Billboard 200 chart, extending her top 10 album string to seven, while Lady Gaga's The Fame placed at #11. However, on Friday when Nielsen/SoundScan re-ran the sales data to include the volume of a digital seller who had missed the initial deadline, The Fame eventually went on top of Sweet And Wild, i.e. the two albums switched charting positions when the chart was refreshed on Friday. Consequences: Jewel's top 10 album string stopped at six while The Fame logged its 47th week on top 10 and continued its journey to the album that spends the most weeks in top 10 without reaching #1.

Congratulations to Lady Gaga and sorry to Jewel. But what's more important here? It's the business ethics of Nielsen/SoundScan, the company that provides data for Billboard charts. They deserve the credit because they refuse to take short cut and are willing to go through all the troubles to do the right thing. They could've easily swept the matter under the rug without anyone else knowing it. They are the single data provider for the nation's most trusted music charts. Nobody would've questioned the ranking. The paper magazine has been issued for the week so it was too late to correct the print. No one is even going to remember the data when next week's chart is released. But they did not do so. They did not take the public's trust for granted and took one step further to ensure that the most accurate data possible was presented. That's why they have established their authority and gained people's trust over time.

I think this is a small but critical news for us know. First of all, this is a good example of business ethics and they did not brag about it. (Thanks to Yahoo Music's columnist Paul Grein's article, otherwise I guess no more than a handful of people will know about this.) An ethical business practice can be as small as this but it's the tiny things like this that lead a company to success. Second, a nation as big as the US with countless retailers can compile music charts every week and even update them within two days, why are we (Taiwan) still unable to have a chart commonly acknowledged by the industry and public? I apparently do not know the reason and obviously have been disappointed like others...