In other words

You could read my last entry on the plight of the music business with regard to file-sharing, or you could read this editorial in the New York Times (registration required).

One interesting bit in the piece is the note on how "shipments of recorded music are down 26 percent since 1999." Maybe I've been conditioned not to trust any statistics thrown out in this debate (which has been addressed in the past), but this looks at least a little suspicious. Again, it completely ignores how many records were released annually, and the industry's reliance on the mega-huge artists, along with continuing consolidation of labels, would lead me to believe that record company rosters and release schedules are markedly less than they were in 1999. Also, how closely correlated are shipments with actual sales? If the labels are touting the decline in shipments, then it stands to reason that the sales figures weren't quite so bad. It would be awfully disingenuous of the RIAA to use the result of increased efficiency (i.e., less returns/cutouts due to more accurate prediction of potential sales) as an indicator of how piracy is ruining the industry.

Meanwhile, stock prices for the corporate parents of three of the big labels (AOL, Vivendi, Sony) have dropped this week in concert, and the beginning of the slide coincided with the lawsuit announcement and the subsequent bad press, which makes me wonder if the street uses KaZaa.