Quit Yer Bitchin'

This Monday, researchers at Harvard and The University of North Carolina issued a study that shows illegal music sharing is no threat to CD sales. The study tracked sales of 680 CDs in late 2002. Songs that were heavily downloaded showed no measurable drop in sales and in fact, file sharing actually increases CD sales for albums that sell more than 600,000 copies. For every 150 downloads of a song from those albums, sales increase by a copy.

Today, Variety said that Usher's "Confessions" sold nearly 1.1 million copies in its debut stanza, posting the biggest sales week since "The Eminem Show" moved 1.3 million units in June 2002. The album is the year's biggest one-week seller but also the biggest seller for a male R&B artist since Soundscan started tracking sales in 1991.

So the recording industry needs to quit their bitchin'. And hire me, dammit.