CBS News: Extreme Surgery For Obese Kids?  [MyFreePress.com] 

Dog News:  'world's oldest dog'

One of our cats is 21-years-old... now I wonder what the record is. 

Davezilla:  "In other news, Brett has a charming little Flash movie featuring Jakob Nielsen throwing down on the dance floor." 

Online Music Sales Declining Three Times Faster Than Overall Music Shipments, As File Sharing Applications Continue To Thrive

"The music industry attributes the decline in online and offline music sales to a variety of factors, such as a slow economy, fewer hit songs, piracy, CD-burning and file-swapping among others," said Peter Daboll, division president of comScore Media Metrix, a division of comScore Networks.

Though the findings indeed show that Kazaa use is on the rise and online music sales are down, it seems to me they are relying on the music industry's assessment of the situation to say that there's a causal effect.  Their findings regarding online sales are "based on the actual online activity of more than 1.5 million representative Internet users" but it does not provide data for those particular users as to whether they participated in file sharing.  Their numbers for the growth in file sharing (14 million users) come from the total population (I guess), not from the 1.5 million users that the rest of the data is based on.  The "analysis" looked at the decline in online sales of CDs and the contrasting growth in online sales in other areas for a given time period (3 quarters).  As I said above, the "analysis" did not look at the file sharing activity of the 1.5 million users it was based on.  If it did look at those users' file sharing activity, wouldn't comScore want to state that? 

Yes - I am still skeptical about this puppy.  In fact, I would not be surprised if the music industry paid for the study as a way to continue feeding consumers their message through major news media.  They (comScore) seem to be following suit with the RIAA recent agenda, i.e., going after university students with that recent letter to 2,000 university leaders.

"comScore Media Metrix will continue to report online purchases of music as well as usage of file-swapping," said Daboll. "In addition, we’ll be conducting more in-depth analyses and looking at key online segments such as the university population, an audience which our data show contains many heavy users of file-swapping services."

I wonder if they know that I stopped buying CDs during the last three quarters, too. And, guess what - I don't participate in Internet file sharing at all (except for occasional download of music offered freely by its composer/copyright owner). I just don't like being treated like a criminal for buying music and expecting that fair use should continue to be treated as fair use.

"While a host of factors inevitably impact consumer behavior, the greater sales decline online as reported by comScore would suggest that Internet file-swapping and CD-burning are having a severe negative impact on music sales among Internet users."

Note the careful choice of wording, "would suggest."  Again, it says that the sales decline was reported comScore, and then implies a cause. 

Online music sales plummet.  Sales of CDs online fall by 25%¸ according to a survey, with CD-burning and illegal song-swapping over the internet blamed.  [BBC News|TECHNOLOGY]

The teaser with the above headline would lead you to believe that the survey found "CD-burning and illegal song-swapping" to be the reason for the fall in sales.  Read the article and what you'll find is that the survey only found that sales of CDs were down.  The "blame" portion came from (guess who?) - "a spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association" according to the article. 

Related:
RIAA Was Right ... The Sky Is Falling. It appears the music industry's fears were justified; new figures show that e-commerce music sales are down 25 percent as file sharing and CD-burning become commonplace. [internetnews.com: Top News]

This article actually says that comScore, the source of the survey, blamed piracy:

Why? Because millions of Internet users continue to use online file-sharing services even as some of these applications, like Napster, have vanished. Kazaa, for one, has helped to fill the "Ded Kitty" void and had 10 million home users in September, according to comScore.

What it doesn't make clear is whether that's an opinion or a finding of the survey.  It certainly shows that Kazaa is widely used, but does it show any evidence that one thing is the cause of the other?   I need to do some more checking into this.  I'm wondering if there's any connection between comScore and the RIAA, and will check to see if the survey itself is available online.

Another thing worth noting is that the survey only looked at online sales.

While the RIAA itself reported in August that total U.S. music shipments dropped seven percent in the first half of 2002 versus the first half of 2001 ($5.93 billion versus $5.53 billion), comScore's data shows that online sales of music fell 20 percent (from $531 million to $424 million) over the same period.

Call me skeptical at this point.  I'll let you know what else I find out about this... 

LawMeme:  Generalized Spam and Blogs 

>>  Performance art is a big thing in Kaite's world – so are photography and music... [Coolstop Daily Pick 11/4/02] 

... Leon gets better soon to continue enjoying the things he liked likes to do... 

November 2002

 


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