I’m not particularly in the mood to get too involved in this discussion at the moment, but I just thought it interesting that the music businesses hysteria about piracy destroying the music business doesn’t seem to be being borne out by the fact that album sales are at an all-time high. Here’s a quote from the Guardian article:
“Music album sales in the United Kingdom have defied the industry’s alarm calls about piracy, shrugging off the world of CD burning and internet file sharing to reach a record high. After a dip in the first quarter of the year, sales hit a new peak of 228.3m at the end of June, almost 3% up on last year. The figure published yesterday by the British Phonographic Industry marks the fifth consecutive year that album sales have topped 200m.”
Now there’s a slump in the sale of singles (but then that’s been happening for years anyway) and – admittedly – the increased sales are mainly in discounted CDs, which has meant a small drop in the industry’s profits, but really – album sales at all time high does not seem to me to correspond that well with “piracy is destroying the music business”… What am I missing here?