Well, for one, the "reporter" only used Nielsen Soundscan as the only source for his / her numbers.
I would take this entire "report" with a heavy dose of salt grains.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_SoundScan"Soundscan is the official method of tracking sales of music and music video products throughout the United States and Canada"It's the "official method", ok, but of WHOM? According to this description... it only tracks CD sales in two countries, out of 149+ in the world. This cannot then be used to gauge any sales on any global distributor, like... most record labels...and iTunes...and anything on the Internet.
"The Recording Industry Association of America also tracks sales (or more specifically, shipments less potential returns) on a long-term basis through the RIAA certification system; it has never used either Nielsen SoundScan or the store-calling method."So, the RIAA, the Recording Industry Associaiton of America, does not use Nielsen SoundScan. So their numbers are not included in the "reporters" numbers. An inaccuracy has developed. An inaccuracy with one of the largest associations making records in America, which is one of the two countries Nielsen services. Oops... I think the "reporter" could have done what I did and Googled... or even used other search methods to find out more accurate information on his / her subject matter.
Some interesting reading occurs further down the "Wiki" :
"Sales data from cash registers is collected from 14,000 retail, mass merchant, and non-traditional (on-line stores, venues, digital music services, etc.) outlets in the United States, Canada and the U.K.
The requirements for reporting sales to Nielsen SoundScan are that the store has Internet access and a point of sale (POS) inventory system. Submission of sales data to Nielsen SoundScan must be in the form of a text file consisting of all the UPCs sold and the quantities per UPC on a weekly basis. Sales collected from Monday-Sunday or Sunday-Saturday are reported to SoundScan every Monday and made available to SoundScan subscribers every Wednesday.[citation needed]"So, for any store that does not have nor use Internet Access, and a POS sale system. This would be some mom and pop stores.
And it only says on there that 14,000 stores are affiliated ot the Nielsen system. I don't know about you, but I wonder about Starbucks'... do they get reported, and if so, to whom?
And one more "little" thing :
http://popdose.com/popdose-cheap-trick-takes-on-nielsen-soun d-scan/
"Now, there are performance and publishing royalties associated with those compilations, so some folks in the band are making money. The other people making money are all the businesses that sell sales data to Nielsen Soundscan, the dominant source of music sales information. (A sister business, Bookscan, handles data on book sales.) Major retail chains sell their sales information to Soundscan, which in turn resells reports to the record companies and others who might want that information.
Read more: Numberscruncher: Cheap Trick Takes On Nielsen SoundScan | Popdose
http://popdose.com/popdose-cheap-trick-takes-on-nielsen-soun d-scan/#ixzz183zV3VEh
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution"
In conclusion,I think, before we all start looking for the next "paradigm" we ought to be looking at a more real landscape. Once we have truer numbers, then we can start to think about what format is more likely selling. And finding out that the companies who sell product are SELLING THE SALES DATA to Nielsen SoundScan... well that to me sounds of a very likely corruptible situation.
Imagine a store that does not have any information, cooks some up, to sell it to Nielsen, so they can make their quarterly profits look better... yummy. Add to that no information from the RIAA, and toss in 149+ countries of which Nielsen knows NOTHING AT ALL, and we get a pretty accurate picture... that it is in fact an unkowable thing, how many sales actually occur.
Logical