Piracy went down. Sales didn’t go up. Go figure.

The contention of the music industry is that piracy is what has been hurting sales the most. A recent report shows that piracy is down in some circles, but “oddly” sales didn’t go up as a result.

For more than a decade the music industry has attributed a massive decline in sales to music piracy. However, in a week where a report from the UK telecoms regulator indicated that piracy has plunged, no industry press releases hit the wire. Perhaps that’s because the effect on sales appears to be non-existent? In fact, the same research shows once again that those who download without permission tend to spend more on music than those who don’t.

The majority of the reports and press releases put out by music industry groups over the past several years can be summarized in a few words: “Piracy is evil and we lose a lot of money because of it.”