Monday, November 04, 2002

Latest anti-Napster propaganda. The Mercury News reports:
A comScore Media Metrix study reveals that while traditional retail music sales are off 6 percent for the first half of the year -- online sales fell 20 percent over the same period. ... The Recording Industry Association of America, the labels' Washington, D.C., trade group, said the study reaffirms what it has been saying all along -- that piracy undermines the marketplace for legitimate, online music.

This is misleading because the "online sales" figure just includes online CD sales. Going online to have a CD shipped is going obsolete because it is being replaced with direct downloads of music. The market for online music is booming, even as the big music labels try to stifle it. The real complaint is that the big labels don't control the online music market the way they control the retail CD market.

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