Soundslip

Doubtless Hillary Rosen has already drawn a huge pie chart to prove the ten percent slump in album sales in the US was down to that evil peer to peer networking, but we, naturally, beg to differ.

The biggest seller of the year - Eminem's Eminem Show - was one of the highest profile albums bounced onto the line prior to release, and doesn't seem to have had its performance hurt. The more telling statistics lay in that two of the biggest sellers in the US - Missundaztood and O Brother - actually came out the previous year, and two titles (8 Mile and, again, O Brother) were soundtrack albums.

In short, hardly any albums came out to inspire people to get their asses down to Best Buy. The admission by the US Record Industry that they'd been operating a price-fixing cartel and as such pissing on consumers for years can't have helped, either. Oh, and up til the 28th December, album sales in the UK had experienced a year on year growth of nearly three and a half percent. Since we're just as good with the Morpheus and the Limewire and the download and burn, the American Industry might like to prepare a brief informal but informative lecture as to why we've not had a similar slump.

Oh, and however cycnical we might be about the whole Fame Stars thing, you can't deny the effect: The Girls versus Boys chart battle before Christmas bumped the singles market sales up by fifty percent on the previous week.