In the continuing “downloading is killing the music industry….and remember, it’s just as illigal as everything else you do” debate, which always inspires more flippy-floppy than Brighton Beach on an August Bank Holiday, the BBC announces that downloads ARE harming US CD sales after all…

And this new report is based on a survey carried out on…

412 students.

Woah, talk about mining the edges of a nation to get an accurate cross-section of the country’s purchasing power. That’s one lazy research team.

C’mon, NBER guys, it could have been one of a million things…Lack of a new Weezer album, too many keg parties (insert Keane and pub crawl respectively, there, UK Readers), higher proportion of girl/boy friends with more-expensive than usual tastes, inability to shift the 200 dodgy Mitsi’s they clubbed together to buy last year before that big all-nighter…anything.

But now these 412 will surely be hanging their head in shame as they realise that they’re being used by the RIAA to justify the idea that it’s cool and right to sue the arse off all their classmates.

…I mean, if the 412 are buying less music, it means they must be getting it from somewhere else, right? Cos they need their fix of the ol’ Chilli Peppers…that must mean that…unh….ummm…..their classmates must be those “serial uploaders” that we’ve been looking for. Aha!

Gotcha!

Naturally this also means that all other reports are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Cause they’re the old reports…and this ‘un here is the new report. K? K.

Or rather it would be if the site worked and you could read it…odd that it should suddenly become unavailable, isn’t it?

*plays scary church organ descending minor chords*

I said “ISN’T IT???”

*cough*

Sorry. Got carried away there.

[added note – okay, it’s now available again, for a fee, but you can’t deny me a moment of Hammer Horror, can you? Thanks. I knew you’d understand.]

But on a happier note, the report also finds that:

“…over 80% of Britney Spears album owners said they had grown tired of her records…”

Remember that this, again, is polling 412 students. Do they really think that any of them actually bought the albums for any other reason than to get drunk girls dancing at their parties?

—

And back in the real world (remember that?), it’s good to see that some US students are doing something about it.

This article was posted on Wednesday, 10 November 2004 at 10:19 am in the Mouthing Off category. You can leave a comment, or Trackback to this article.