Why CD sales are REALLY in decline

The music industry wants you to believe that P2P file-sharing has hurt CD sales, but the actual figures point to this being raw, steaming FUD. The music industry is losing CD sales because they’re a bunch of monopolistic price-fixers. George Scriban — a freelance analyst and researcher who could use a job, hint hint — has posted a remarkable piece of original research to his blog that demonstrates the relationship of the labels’ price-fixing practices and the decline in unit sales. In other words, when CDs cost more, people don’t buy as many of ’em.

so, the RIAA says that the price of a CD fell more than 40% in 13 years. the states’ attorneys general cite CD prices as dropping from $15 to $10 in about a year. that would seem to indicate that 80% of the RIAA’s vaunted price drop happened in the last couple of years of the period they cite, when discount merchandisers like Best Buy, Circuit City, and Target touched off a CD price war. in other words, CD prices didn’t drop until some cowboys came along and screwed with Big Content’s cozy little arrangement — you can guess what happened next.

coincidentally, the RIAA doesn’t post any figures on the average price of a CD since 1996, right about when the FTC and the states say the RIAA’s members started their price-fixing scheme.

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