RIAA Sales Compared to Download Statistics

OneInEveryCrowd writes "According to an article at SFGate, although the recent crackdown and lawsuits have caused a 22% drop in downloading, the drop in CD sales actually accelerated during the same period. My own response to the RIAA crackdown was to get a Netflix account, get into fansubs, and swear off CD purchases for life. If this was mainstream behavior CD sales would have dropped to zero. I was still pleased to see that many people responded in a similar fashion though." An EMI executive has a piece giving the standard industry view, but this piece about Universal slashing CD prices may be more telling.

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[despite a] 22% drop in downloading, the drop in CD sales actually accelerated during the same period

Yes! So it wasn't the downloading that caused poor sales afterall. It was the
crappy music + high prices + strongarming.

Also, congratulations to all who have not purchased CD's in protest. Keep up the good work.

Nice spin doctoring ...

[molarmass192]

Meanwhile, he noted record stores report that blank recordable CDs are outselling recorded CDs, a trend that shows computer users are not only downloading songs, but copying and burning CDs.

That's a gem, using the same logic, if guns outsold waterpistols, that would show that more people are commiting murder. This may come as a shock but CD-Rs can also be used to record data (gasp) or am I the only person in the free world who uses them for this purpose? Also, what if people are creating mix CDs of music they legally purchased? Nah, impossible.

Also, we need to do a little lesson in math:

50 CD-Rs == $10
50 CDs == $750

Does anybody want to bet that even if music CDs were $0.20 each, CD-Rs would STILL outsell CDs.

Nice job distorting the data to fit their pitch though.