Decline in CD sales "what you might expect in a recession"
The EconoPundit is pointing to and commenting on this Salon article on whether online music sharing is really hurting CD sales. Bottom line: the numbers don't add up to support the recording industry's doom-and-gloom claims.

CD sales are off about 5 percent this year.

Writes economist Stan Liebowitz, a professor of managerial economics at the University of Texas at Dallas: The number of downloads appears to be larger than the total number of CDs purchased. Worldwide annual downloads, according to estimates from places like Webnoize, would indicate that the number of downloads - if you assume there are 10 songs on a CD - is something like five times the total number of CDs sold in the U.S. in a year, and one-and-a-half times the worldwide sales. That's so large that you have to say: Look, if downloads are substitutes [for CDs] in any significant way, we should see really big declines...

One of the more interesting articles I've read in awhile.