John Mellencamp

As soon as I signed this deal with SoundScan, and there was a magazine called Radio and Records at the time, who was rivaling Billboard.

And if Tim hadn't have bought SoundScan, Radio and Records would have bought them, which would have made them the premier label.

because they were the most modern.

So SoundScan changed everything.

So I'm sure that you remember that there was a time when you knew every song that was number one.

Then all of a sudden you woke up one day and you didn't know, how does this song become number one?

But the way that it was before SoundScan, each song had to work its way up the charts.

So if you had, let's say, 20 plays, I'm just throwing out low numbers, but if you had 20 plays, that got added to the 20 plays that you got the next week.

So now you have 40 plays.

So you might move up from 36 to 31.

But Joe Rogan in Boston was hearing the fucking songs as they move up.

Oh, I heard this new song.

You talk to your friend.

And they said, yeah, I heard that song.

And then all of a sudden the song would build and build and build and build and build and build.

And Michael Jackson would be number one or whoever.

And once SoundScan took over, if you were in a rock band, the record companies said, well, fuck this.

We're not even going to advertise in Indianapolis anymore.

The biggest...

are R&B stations and they're playing rap.