A music company lied? I know it's ahrd to believe, but apparantely the entire industry has been lying to consumers and to courts about their sales numbers. Turns out that despite all their protestation about piracy killing their profits, sales of individual CDs to customers have gone up. What has gone down? CDs shipped to stores, which means that stores are stocking less, but selling just as much. They must've spent several years overstocking, and got sick of it. Another factor is that sales of the top 100 CDs have gone down, which means that people are buying a more diverse catalog of music. My recollection from my years in the bookstore is that book publishers make less money per sale of a bestseller because they are usually discounted, and I would think that music works the same way. What does all that mean? Overall profits probably went up from 2003 to 2004, the period this study was done. All the numbers came from SoundScan.

As I read this article more thoroughly, I find more dishonesty. They are listing sales of individual CDs using the international market, where I suspect piracy causes more of a hit, and using domestic numbers for the shipments to stores, which makes the domestic market look bad. They are lying, and I hope the courts catch them. In the best of worlds, this would lead to politicians not passing DRM laws and similar such things, so that corporations will have to have good business models to make money, and not just legislate their profits while restricting our ability to use what we ahve paid for however we want.