US CD Sales Increase in 2004

Lindsay Lohan writes "BBC is reporting that CD sales rose by 2.3% in the U.S. in the year 2004 despite the growing popularity of legal digital music downloads through services such as iTunes. On the other hand, a BBC report from last July noted that pirated CD sales have hit a record high. Sounds like the RIAA should be going after the real pirates, not little Susie or Grandma."

Comments

There is not a strong correllation here

[krbvroc1]

I love these articles because they are so misleading. I don't believe there is a strong correllation between sales and piracy. Sales are higher because the economy is doing better. Could they be even higher if there were no pirating? Perhaps, but I would consider it a small subset of people who would have bought something but didn't. Most people downloading stuff would never have bought it in the first place. If the record label lowered their prices that would also increase sales. Thus lower prices == piracy. ;)

The fundamental flaw is that in order to exaggerate their losses they come up with absurd calculations like loss = num_files_shared_last_year * retail_price. That is absurd.

I was watching C-SPAN last night and saw the confirmation hearing of U.S. President Bush's new Commerce Secretary. He was asked by Sen Gordon Smith (R-OR) how he would handle the copyright violations and IP issues that are crippling our innovative entrepreneurial spirit. I believe thre new Commerce Sec nominee has been CEO of Kellogg company. Wasn't that the company who was price-fixing cereal some time ago? Does anyone remember?

No sh*t!

[los furtive]

I just got back from a trip to South-East Asia, and in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos it was rediculous how every single music store sold bootleg CDs. Mostly stuff downloaded from the net (lots of 'best of' with tons of typos), but in high-end/high-quality cases. Especially the stuff I saw in Louang-Prabang (Laos). They were dirt cheap, $2-$5, and I heard they were even cheaper in VietNam, although I didn't make it out there. If you want even more flagrant copyright violations, when I had satelite tv in Cambodia they were playing Swordfish on one of the channels and it was the exact same DivX screener that I'd downloaded when it first came out in theatres...with the same animated logo scrolling across the top right and everything. How crazy is that?