9 million, and last year's figure was 803.3 million (RIAA). Sales figures only began to decline in 2001, ironically after Napster was ordered to discontinue their operations. An increase of .38 percent was displayed in CD sales from 1999 to 2000 followed by a 6.4 percent decrease from 2000 to 2001. Last year, CD sales further fell 8.9 percent from its previous year. At first glance these figures would seem to support the RIAA's arguments, but other factors are not incorporated in these statistics. One such issue is that, "the record industry released 11,900 fewer titles in 2000 than it released in 1999, a 25 percent decrease, yet the total number of units shipped decreased only 10.3 percent and the dollar value of these units fell 4.1 percent"(Snyder and Snyder). These figures include full CD, cassette, and vinyl albums as well as videos and all forms of singles. This trend continued as approximately the same number of 11,900 fewer new releases as compared to 1999 was introduced once again in 2001(Snyder and Snyder). The average price per unit is continuously rising regardless of number of releases, or quantity shipped or units sold. Had these combined 23,800 titles been released by the record industry, figures would have continued to rise as they had in previous years. In an attempt to further expand their case, a press release by the RIAA declared that the number of burned CD's worldwide is proximate to the number of CD's sold through retail on the condition that just half of the blank discs sold in 2001 were used to copy music (qtd. in Boucher). Having read this information, "you"d have to assume. that if it weren't for personally copied music, CD sales would be double, and with the copying they should have dropped by at least half, not 10 percent" (Bricklin). In fact, according to Billboard the best-selling CD single is still exceeding the most popular download. The top CD single, "I Can Only Imagine" by MercyMe, sold 6,900 copies in one week compared to 4,700 downloads of OutKast's "Hey Ya!"(BBC News).
