Music sales rise in United States

After years of decline, sales of recorded music and music-video products appear to be stabilizing in the United States.
The New York Times

The story "Music sales rise in United States" published March 23, 2005 at 8:50 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from The New York Times expires after 7 days.

[Rusdude]

_SHIPPED_

The most important part of this notice is that the industry counts music sales by number of CDs shipped to RETAILERS.

This fact is one of the main reasons that industry's connecting of the figures (apparent decline in sales in past years) with music piracy, has been disputed. Majority of the declines could be attributed to the better tracking, sale forecasting, and use of JIT (Just-in-Time) inventory process by retailers (they have better estimates of how much they can sell).

Agreed

Last year they had record SALES at the point-of-sale (retailers) in the music industry... but they reported LOSSES to piracy because they SHIPPED fewer units to retailers.

For example (these are just to ilustrate my point):
Year 2003: 1000 units shipped, 600 units sold.
The response from the RIAA "We're losing to piracy"
Year 2004: 900 units shipped, 750 sold.
RIAA "Piracy is impacting us EVEN MORE! Sue, Sue, Sue!" This in a year where they made MORE sales to consumers.

It's this kind of skewed logic that they present to politicians (along with a big assed campaign contribution) that in turns gives them more of a stranglehold on the internet, copyright, and our freedoms.

RIAA: Species DIE when they don't adapt in nature, but you've found a way to keep your prehistoric business model alive... congratulations on being dirtier than most mobsters and politicians.