For over a decade, US album sales have been racing to the bottom. In the trial brief for their case against LimeWire, the record industry has presented a graph that shows how sales may have fared had Napster never occurred. It's an interesting chart to analyze. Would sales have continued to race to the top or would the video game boom taken away some steam?Given the technological and cultural shifts have happened since Napster, it feels dishonest to say that sales would've just endlessly skyrocketed. There's no doubt that the record industry market would be much healthier today, but would it be this healthy? Had P2P technologies not came to be, many other events would've impacted sales negatively. Nowhere near as negatively as others, but still. Is the chart below overly optimistic or not nearly optimistic enough?
(via Hollywood Reporter)
