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This has been pointed out before, but Sony has already won a few format wars. They were the creator of the 3.5" floppy (or 90mm disk in UK, right?) and partnered with Phillips to create the Compact Disc.

CD:
"1980 Compact Disc standard proposed by Philips & Sony.
1981 Matsushita accepts Compact Disc Standard
Digital Audio Disc Committee also accepts Compact Disc Standard.
Sharp achieves production of semiconductor laser.
Philips & Sony collaboration ends.
1982 Sony & Philips both have product ready to go."
http://www.oneoffcd.com/info/historycd.cfm

So atleast not completely false.

Xbox VS PS3:
I may have seen these on some sort of sony fanboy webpage or something, but atleast there they had a graph where the 360 was in lead, but if you changed the start of the graph to the same they more or less matched perfectly over time. If you are 100% sure sales for xbox360s first month compared to ps3s first month, and then second, third and so on in total was very different feel free to post source or tell so. If I'm wrong I blame a webpage which lied.
I found the page but not the correct article:
http://www.sonydefenseforce.com/
Of course it's a fanboy page, but I don't expect them to lie, only show the stuff which makes Sony look good.
Another graph: http://www.sonydefenseforce.com/?p=129

Minidisc wasn't a failure over here atleast, I know two people who got one ;/, which may seem small but then I don't know much people. I thought it seemed nice except that you had to "record" your music, then came the NetMD which saved that but then I couldn't use it with my OS of choice, and also you had to convert all your music. Then came the Hi-MD and I would definitly have bought one of those over an MP3-player if the format of the actual data wasn't so retarded. Of course they failed when they didn't supported MP3s...

For the record, looks like the first commercial laser discs were just ahead of CD. There were several versions of laser video discs though.

for example
http://www.oneoffcd.com/info/historycd.cfm

I always feel like the record companies fooled us when CD's came out. Sure, they sounded great, but when CD's were new, vinyl LP's were now $7, and the CD was $14-16, with the excuse that "we are capacity constrained, when we get more capacity, prices will be much cheaper, because these things are cheap to make".

I think that currently the important difference, in regards to copyright, between "physical" content media (e.g. dead tree flake binders or plastic-aluminum discs) and digitized content media (for example the medium used for the dissemination of this reply-content) is that content authors cannot as easily slow down the unauthorized dissemination on the latter.

Copyright law allows unauthorized copying of content without the consent of the author for what it deems "fair use" (i.e. copying of content for criticism, study, sharing (sharing your LOTR dead tree flake binder with a friend for instance)). Instruments like the DMCA (pdf), in this respect, threaten this provision thus making copyright law an even bigger absurdity than it currently is (pointing out flaws in an insecure DRM system becomes a felony.)

My opinion is that content producers are mere performers of acts of recombination (pdf) rather than the mythical creators consumer society (since the rise of the burgueois) make most believe. Freedom (as in cost) of access to these bits is imperative for the continued production of knowledge.

If you're interested in the technology-society-culture intersection, you might also be insterested in this content (copyleft pdf's):

• Digital Resistance
• The Electronic Disturbance
• Electronic Civil Disobedience

The CD player first went on sale in the Fall of 1982 in Europe and Japan, and in the US in the Spring of 1983. source

That's why many of us threw out hundreds of dollars of records and diamond needles the day CD's came out.

The lesson? The surest way to enforce adoption of a new technology is to disallow other technologies...

Sounds like you answered your own question. Even with a vast array of MP3 sites, the number of people donwloading versus buying is quite small. Napster at it's peak was about 10 million users. In 1990, there was a billion CD's sold worldwide. I don't have the numbers for last year but I am sure it is about the same, if not more.

Why one way for movies and another for MP3? From a tech savvyness perspective it should be the same... Right now, I can get both movies and music on Morpheus/Kazaa. Same interface, same technical skill. The real issue is patience. It takes me 2 minutes to download a song and most of a day to get a movie. That (and the quality thing) is the real issue to pirating movies.