Chad Orzel has some very penetrating thoughts on the Sherman interview, and on Blogcritics in general. He should join us, shouldn't he?
On Sherman:
- It sounds impressive, but it's a classic attempt to befuddle the public with statistics. 19% plus 41% is only 60%, and having covered "purchasing more" and "purchasing less," the only options left for the missing 40% are "purchasing about the same number of CD's" or "don't know/ no answer."
40% would be an awful lot of "no answer" responses, so at least some of those are probably "about the same." If it's half "about the same" and half "no answer," well, then, we have what statisticians would call "a wash" — 41% purchasing less, 39% purchasing about the same amount of music, if not more. If you put all those people into the "about the same" category, an arguably more accurate spin on these numbers would be that 59% of people surveyed bought at least as much music after file-sharing as before.
Now, 41% is still much larger than 19%, so it's reasonable to believe that there's been a net reduction in sales, but that's not necessarily true. If those 41% halved their music buying, and the 19% doubled it, it would basically be a wash. If the 19% doubled their purchasing, and the 41% reduced their spending by a third, it'd be a net gain. Without knowing what they actually asked, and the relative sizes of the increases and decreases, it's impossible to say whether file-sharing is really decreasing sales. Sherman's initial citation of this study is the sort of dodgy use of statistics that should raise a red flag for anyone who can do math.
The right thing to do here would be to use this study as a starting point, and use it to craft a sensible approach to file-sharing technology....
- Which brings us around to the problem with Blogcritics (which, I hasten to add, I think is a brilliant idea)-- what we've got here is an assemblage of a hundred random people writing about music, each from their own perspective. It's a great idea, but it's not really a useful tool, yet. It'll take a good while before it becomes truly useful, as we, the readers, will need to see a bunch of reviews from the various critics before we can really judge whether Ken Layne liking an album will mean that I will like the same album, or my wife will like it, or whoever.
Article comments
1 - Michael Croft
I'll comment on Cary Sherman's interview elsewhere, but I wanted to support Chad's concept of some sort of Reviewer Profile. Perhaps as text in an archive by Author template?
If we got ambitious, there are all sorts of 'rating' systems (such as NetFlix or IMDB's system) that match albums or movies based on other users with similar preferences. Something like that which told the user how close his/her tastes were to the reviewer's tastes would provide the kind of information Chad (rightly) thinks would help users.
2 - Donny
If writers publish their personal Top 10 list, it would add a certain perspective that readers may find helpful. I like this idea.