21 January, 2003:

Posted at 21h14. Permalink.

It seems to me that the music industry have more than half won if they've succeeded in setting the terms for debate such that it's an established fact that music sales have decreased. I've seen no proof of this. Especially not since: we've just moved out of the CD boom of people replacing their vinyl; we're in a recession, or at least a slow-down, and consumers are spending less; anecdotally, marketing budgets are down. This is even without: people might be spending their money on movies instead (I heard DVD sales are good); the big music labels are churning out manufactured crap that doesn't appeal to a large section of the market (grown-ups). And I think it's fair if I use myself as an example because I'm precisely the sort of person who downloads and shares music: I buy more CDs than I used to, not less. Have music sales genuinely gone down? I'm not convinced.