Nielsen/SoundScan SoundScan collects sales information from a wide sample of the retail industry and uses that data to extrapolate (guess) at the total actual sales. They do not collect pricing information, just quantities.

Grasping at Straws and Sucking Wind by George Ziemann -- January 13, 2007 Nielsen/SoundScan reports of last year's music sales showed up some time last week and it looks like 2006 was another great year for anyone who dislikes the RIAA membership. Nielsen really tried to spin it hard to make it sound like digital sales are making up the slack. Nielsen will tell you that customers made more music purchasing decisions in 2006 than ever before (or at least more than 2005). This is true. More purchasing decisions. CD/album sales declined again. Downloaded singles are still growing. Here's how that works with a hypothetical scenario in which albums cost $10 and a single costs $1, over an extended period of time, just for the sake of easy math. Year 1 100 albums sold. Total income -- $1000 Year 2 90 albums sold. Income -- $900 20 songs sold. Income -- $20 Total income -- $920 10% increase in purchasing decisions. Year 3 70 albums sold. $700 60 songs sold. $60 Total income -- $760 Singles sales up 200%; purchase decisions increase 18% Year 4 65 albums sold. $650 90 songs sold. $90 Total income -- $740 Singles sales up 50%; purchase decisions increase 19% So the whole "purchasing decisions" thing indicates nothing. Just an especially lame attempt at a smokescreen to take our attention away from the vortex of suckage the record labels have fallen into. EMI seems to be in the worst state of panic right now. Heads rolled in the executive offices this week and they're going to cut about 850 more people from its recorded music division, which will cut their roster even further, which will mean they'll put out even less music next year with less variety, more bad falsetto, miasmatic blondes and cartoons because, hey, they were popular last year. And they still can't sell Beatles tracks. Another sign that they're all in trouble is that, after a mere decade of epic blockheadedness, they're finally starting to think that maybe there's something to this mp3 thing after all and also may actually have been introduced to the thought that DRM might not be the way to go. They're still trying to wrap their greedy little minds around it. Meanwhile, the video game industry passed the $12.5 billion mark this year. I can't help but wonder if any of that money came from music purchasing decisions wherein the actual decision was to purchase a video game instead.