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Entertainment Industry Blowing Smoke
Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16382648
CD and Album sales fall 13% in 2010 while digital album sales RISE 24%. And an entertainment industry group claims that piracy is to blame.
Hogwash.
The fact is that fewer people want physical CDs anymore. Most of us have an MP3 player of some sort in our pocket, whether it's an iPod, an iPhone, an Android phone or whatever. More people are using Pandora, Spotify and other online services. Many of us have taken our increasingly dusty collections of CDs and either sold them at used music stores or stuffed them in a closet.
Furthermore the days of wanting to pay $15 to get an entire CD just for that one song you like are long since over. Amazon and iTunes make it possible to get that one song you wanted - often for less than $1.
But the entertainment industry is hot to get SOPA or PIPA passed in the United States and similar legislation passed elsewhere to give them unprecedented powers to control what happens on the Internet, even though neither of those bills has much hope of actually slowing down piracy. And so they are going to blame piracy for every news story that comes down the pipe.
Album sales down? Blame piracy. (ignoring the fact that digital sales are WAY up)
Artist revenue lagging? Blame piracy. (despite the fact that they really aren't)
Global warming? Blame piracy.
Anything and everything to try and bolster their case that SOPA and/or PIPA need to be passed. Throwing millions of dollars in lobbying money at Congresspeople won't hurt their efforts either, of course.