ARIA Fudges numbers, conveniently leaves out the fact that they had record
sales in 2003 in their annual report released this month. Whatsamatta?
Doesn't jibe with claims that piracy is killing your sales numbers?
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...412234274.html

"I'll tell you what the record companies are paying for now, and it's not
scholarships for the struggling artists they say they're trying to protect.
It's lawsuits. ARIA is taking on Kazaa and suing university students.
American record companies have sued nearly 2000 file-sharers in the past six
months. Even the FBI has become involved. It says music piracy has become
its third priority behind terrorism and counter-intelligence. A number of US
Congress members who rely on the entertainment industry for campaign funds
lobbied the FBI to spend more money hunting file-sharers and CD burners. So
now CDs in the US carry FBI stickers warning of fines of $250,000 or five
years in prison."

ARIA laments the decline in cassette-single sales?
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...199330947.html

"Contrary to the music industry Chicken Littles, the sky is not falling
down.

After several years warning of dire consequences for record companies
because of rampant music downloading and copying, the Australian Record
Industry Association yesterday released sales figures for 2003 showing an
increase of nearly 8 per cent."

Independent labels say "What industry slump?"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0411/p13s02-almp.html

"While executives at those labels wail about the industry's imminent
collapse, indie labels and artists are singing a much happier tune. Profits
are up - in some cases by 50 to 100 percent. That's in contrast to overall
album sales, which dropped about 11 percent in 2002."

"Paul Foley, general manager of the biggest independent label, Rounder
Records of Cambridge, Mass., happily brags, '2002 was actually Rounder's
best year in history. We were up 50 percent over 2001.'"

Hhhhmmmm.... this is starting to sound familiar. ; )

ryanm

Hi,

In message , ryanm
writes

Hhhhmmmm.... this is starting to sound familiar. ; )

Then there's this...

"File sharing has no effect on CD sales, a pair of US academics have
claimed"

The finding will not make pleasant reading for the music industry, which
claims file-sharing is the cause of the huge decline seen in North
American, German and Italian CD sales.

Harvard Business School Associate Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee and
Professor Koleman Strumpf of the University of North Carolina base their
claim on research carried during the Autumn and Winter of 2002 to
compare song download volumes with CD album sales.

Later in the article...

"File sharing has no statistically significant effect on purchases of
the average album in our sample," their report states. "Moreover, the
estimates are of rather modest size when compared to the drastic
reduction in sales in the music industry. At most, file sharing can
explain a tiny fraction of this decline."

Full article at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/36655.html

--
Regards,
Glenn Booth