While it would be nice to disregard the "statisics" pointing toward dvd-a pulling ahead with "Hogwash - it's just spin and hype." I don't think it can be done so easily. There are three possibilities of what is going on here.
1) INTENTIONAL MISINFOIRMATION - the article is the DVD-A council clamoring on with there spin and hype rhetoric and propaganda to intentionally cripple SACD's appeal at the consumer level
2) UNINTENTIONAL MISINFORMATION - the atricle missed some key facts, or a large percentage of the numbers have been overlooked or missed entirely, but none the less a mistake, not malicious intent
3) THE ARTICLE IS TRUE - the numbers are not skewed, and the data is true and thorough enough.
Important facts : The DVD-A council wrote the ARTICLE, they didn't take the survey. That was the RIAA. You must understand who those two bodies are, and what their function is.
The DVD-A council's purpose it to determine the media's standards, and develop ways to make that media more accessable to john q. public to further propagate and vitalize their format. So, we do understand that the DVD-A council has an agenda (I doubt they'd deny that) they are not ultimately responsible for the numbers though. If you look more closely, you'll see that they developed their clearly biased atricle on some not so clearly biased numbers. The statistic is a reflection of an RIAA survey.
Although the oft beleaguered RIAA may not be the most liked organization in town, allow me to "don their cloth" for just a moment. Their purpose is to protect and maintain the copyrighted music and intellectual property of music and musicians. And secondly maintain the profitability of the music industry.
If you look historically at cases where the the RIAA got involved you'd see musicians or indiviuals were sued for selling or sampling music w/out permission, and things of that nature. The RIAA is also guilty of "price fixing" CD's which is why prices are so high. But at the end of the day they exsist as an entity to protect and maintain the music industry. I'm sure they have their say about concert tickect prices and all kinds of other areas of all things "music". That is really what this is about. The "DVD-A council" and their camp aren't even pawns in the game here. Their elatated article about DVD-A sales being 5x higher is elated because somebody outside of their camp who is "objective" and "authoritative" observed it. I don't hink that they would be quite so excited about internally generated vaporware.
So, the article may be skewed, but I don't believe the numbers are until proven otherwise. To the RIAA SACD is just as profitable as DVD-A, and I don't think that they give two rips which format wins. But, you'd better believe they will follow the money. And, that is a reflection of what is being consumed. So, it is only natural that they are finding out what consumers want. Because they want consumer's money. They know that you bought Dark side of the moon on vinyl, and when it hit tape, you bought it then, and when it hit CD you bought it yet again, and whenever a new format comes out they will be right there making sure to load you down with all of your favorite re-issues and new releases on the *new and improved* format for just a few dollars more than the last format. Certainly though RIAA follows the money, the money doesn't follow them. That would be the tail wagging the dog. I'm sure the RIAA could find more effective ways to advertise.
