Country Insider covered the relaunch of Record Research.

A little over a year ago, Kim Bloxdorf wasn’t sure Record Research would ever publish another book.

Joel Whitburn, who founded the Menomonee Falls, WI, company in 1970 and spent the next five decades building it into the definitive library of music chart history, died in June 2022. He left behind an irreplaceable archive — and a staff that had shrunk, through attrition and loss, to essentially two people. “It was just down to Head Researcher Paul Haney and me,” Bloxdorf, Whitburn’s daughter and the company’s Publisher, tells Country Insider. “We were working really hard to keep the fires burning, but we really weren’t able to work on something new.”

The cavalry arrived in September 2025 in the form of Vinnie Freda, a longtime Record Research customer and former Chief Data Officer at Warner Music Group, who came aboard as CEO and majority owner with a mandate to preserve and extend Whitburn’s legacy. On Friday, Record Research sent the files for “Joel Whitburn’s History of Top Country Singles 1944-2025” to the printer. It’s the company’s 230th title and its first new release under Freda’s leadership.