Quote:
Originally Posted by Sil_liS
Are we supposed to be surprised that money is used like this?
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I think we're supposed to be surprised that money works so specifically and effectively for anyone who has it, no matter how unconnected they might be. It's a question not of NYTBR being corrupt but of its fraud markers being bypassed.
Corruption would have been my first thought. I'd have assumed this was another form of payola, which determined visible successes in the music industry until late 1991, when Soundscan began reporting which albums actually sold the most -- far more hiphop than had ever been acknowledged, for example, which led to its dominance in that decade.
I was in the industry then and remember that from real life: from an established client's sudden inability to buy their way into airplay and sales (which I hadn't known about until no one could do it), and from rock professionals' reactions to the sudden ascendancy of kinds of music which they'd assumed were irrelevant.
Just now, I looked up the Wikipedia entry for SoundScan to confirm my recollection of the dates and found an article and a book in the footnotes which confirm soundscan's role in hiphop's success.
Fascinating, to watch privileged information become historical fact.