The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/10/09 Section: Variety

Media Credit: Courtesy Adam Wexler Rank 'em will provide music fans entire catalogs of songs to rank and will not be based on sales or airplay. [Click to enlarge]

In a time when album sales are on a sharp decline and commercial music superstars have fallen by the wayside, numerous independent Web sites have begun to reassess the criteria by which a "popular song" is measured.

Such is the case with Rank 'em, a grassroots-oriented Web site community started by four University students. The mission: to give bands' and artists' biggest fans a voice, providing them with entire catalogs of songs to choose to rank.

"It's not going to be based on commercial factors like CD sales or radio airplay," said Adam Wexler, founder and CEO of the Rank 'em project. "It's strictly going to be determined by the fans."

Wexler graduated from the University in Dec. 2007 with a major in real estate and was a member of the inaugural class of the Terry Music Business Certificate Program.

Wexler was inspired to create Rank 'em as a means to combat what he saw as the unrealistic representation of artists' most popular songs on mainstream music distributors such as Amazon and iTunes.

"Other sites' charts are based on what's going to sell the most - what's going to make them the most money," he said. "That should not have a reflection on what our rankings are. We're inviting the fans to take an artist and explore their catalog deeper."

To help realize his goal, Wexler teamed up with University alumnus Danny Kirschner, grad student Piyush Parate and senior Adam Blaschke to create Rank 'em.

Kirschner, who graduated in August 2008 with a major in management information systems, deals with design and strategy. Parate, who is working toward a master's in computer science, specializes in search optimization. Blaschke, a computer science major, handles the technical responsibilities, including coding the Web site's framework.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools