Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the Washington-based RIAA, which coordinates the industry's anti-piracy campaign, said that effort is on the right track, regardless of what the NPD studies show.I thought it was all about the weapons of mass...er, eradicating file sharing. My mistake."For us, the ultimate measurement of success has been, and continues to be, creating an environment where legal online music services can flourish,'' Lamy said in a statement. "All indicators point in the right direction -- sales of CDs, legal downloads and awareness that file sharing copyrighted music is illegal -- have all increased.''
Of course all of the factors the RIAA cites as vaidation of their legal blitzkrieg are probably more appropriately attributed to market forces.
Paid music downloads are "flourishing" because, until the iTunes Music Store, nothing really convenient or good actually existed; they had no place to go but up. An increase in CD sales is an interesting yardstick. So many factors go into a retail success (price, promotion, location, seasonality) it's hard to take the RIAA's reductivist version of events—"It's the lawsuits, stupid"—seriously. Hell, plenty of people even make the case that file sharing activity is marketing, and helps to increase awareness of an artist or release.
It seems that the music business would have done as well, if not better, last year even without suing 12-year-old girls and septugenarian grandmothers, or forcing DRM down our throats.
