12/18/2019 by The Hollywood Reporter Staff
With the deal, the parent company of The Hollywood Reporter is reuniting Billboard with the music consumption analytics platform after a decade-long separation.
Valence Media, the parent company of The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard, is acquiring the Nielsen Music insights and product suite, the companies announced Wednesday.
The purchase reunites Billboard with the leading music consumption analytics platform after a decade-long separation.
Nielsen Music — formerly Nielsen SoundScan — was created in 1991 by Mike Fine and Mike Shalett and has provided the Billboard charts with consumption insights on sales, downloads and streams since then, fueling the Billboard Hot 100, Billboard 200, Billboard Artist 100 and many other top genre and airplay tallies. Billboard and Nielsen were under the same ownership from 1999 to 2009, the Dutch media conglomerate Verenigde Nederlandse Uitgeverijen. (VNU acquired Billboard in 1994 and Nielsen in 1999.) In 2007, VNU changed its name to Nielsen and two years later sold Billboard to e5 Global Media Holdings, which became Prometheus Global Media under Guggenheim Digital Media. Billboard has operated under Valence Media since 2018.
Financial terms of the deal between Valence Media and Nielsen were not disclosed.
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