Not only are members of the Recording Industry (RIAA) hypocrites, but appearantly they aren't too good with simple math. The idiots complain that they are severely getting less and less money, and this is directly a result of online filesharing. From the statistics on the RIAA's website, we can see that's not the case at all. The image below is a slightly modified version of the original table found on the RIAA's website.
What is the drastic drop in Total Value of all items sold by the members of the RIAA? There is no drastic drop at all. The year 2002 is up to 1997 standards. Oddly enough, people then didn't complain about being fired, getting a pay cut, etc. In fact, in 1993 the RIAA made $2 billion less than now and no one was whining.
And how can you blame filesharing as the cause of the drop in sales? The RIAA's own idiotic business plans are the cause. For example, who buys cassettes anymore? CD singles? I might have heard of LP's. And what the hell is vinyl? It's easy to write off losses incurred by outdated plans from the 1970's and blame others.
There is a very interesting correlation between the price of CD's and
decrease in CD sales. The average price for any given year can be calculated
by dividing the Dollar Value of a CD by the Units Shipped.
For Y2002, $12044.1 / 803.3= $14.99.
For Y2001, $14.64.
For Y2000, $14.02.
For Y1999, $13.65.
How odd.
1999 was the year of the biggest sales in Total Value. The RIAA has only itself to blame for lagging sales: Every year after 1999 that it increased the price per CD, less people bought CD's.
Another fallacy in blaming filesharers is assuming all downloaded music would have been bought. For example, just because I download Skankira's songs (because I am masochist who likes to torture himself listening to drowning rats) does not mean I would buy one of them in a store.