| Sumario: | Part of a special section on media and marketplaces. The writers discuss the development of SoundScan, a point-of-purchase information technology used in the music industry to streamline marketing processes and reduce the uncertainty faced by cultural producers. They assess how the technologies of SoundScan and its equivalent in radio, Broadcast Data Systems, will be integrated into the industrial practices and affect the vitality of popular music. They argue that SoundScan and BDS may discourage innovation in popular music but that they may increase the exposure of what heretofore have been regarded as marginal artists and genres. It is concluded that SoundScan has transformed chart data into a commodity that is accessible only to the largest players and that the commodification of information that it represents signifies the ways in which industries may appropriate information technology to increase control and profits at the expense of pluralism.
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