But they aren't up as much as they would be if piracy were completely eliminated....
*bwahahaha*
Sorry. Thought I could say that with a straight face. I don't know how the MPAA/RIAA do it.
Seriously though, when CD sales were going down and the RIAA was complaining about it, I didn't feel sorry for them because:
1. They were coming off of a multi-year record setting trend upwards. Since when are they guaranteed to have a record setting year every year?
2. The economy was in recession. People had less money to spend. If your income dropped, would you stop buying CDs or stop buying food?
3. There were more choices for the consumers' entertainment dollar. Time was you could spend your entertainment dollars on an album or by going to a movie. (Sure there were other options, but let's simplify matters by just looking at those.) Now you can buy a CD or go to a movie, but you can also buy a DVD, buy a game, subscribe to a MMPORG, spend extra for premium cable channels, subscribe to a web-based entertainment service (e.g. NetFlix), etc. There are a lot more players competing for your entertainment dollar today than in the past. So naturally less of that entertainment dollar will go to CDs.
4. They were shipping less CDs. Yes, they actually reduced how many CDs they shipped and then complained about how they sold less CDs!
5. The CDs they shipped weren't high quality acts/songs. This is highly subjective, but I've heard it said by enough other people to figure that it was a wide group of people thinking this and not just me.
6. The CDs they did ship were high priced. This is kind of linked to #3 and #5 but different enough to be on it's own. Why pay $15 for a CD with one or two good songs when you could by a decent movie on DVD for $10? Or when you could get a month of DVD rentals at Netflix?
Of course, the RIAA ignored all of those factors and figured that it must be Internet Piracy. After all, that's the only possible reason that doesn't blame the industry execs or market forces outside their control.
