According to a recent piece in the Washington Post, the RIAA has found a new way to continue claiming (against the evidence) that they are being killed by file sharing: focusing on “shipments”, rather than sales or profits.

Over the past five years, shipments of music to retailers have dropped by 21 percent, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. “There is no question that piracy — in its various, ugly forms — is the primary reason for that decline,” said Mitch Bainwol, chairman and chief executive officer of the association, in a written statement. “In the face of such devastating and ongoing harm, it is appropriate that record companies find ways to facilitate the continued investment in new art.”

They key word, as Tom points out over at Begging to Differ, is “shipments”. Why did the RIAA carefully choose that word? Because, despite their years of doomsaying and hype, music sales and profits are now up, and at the same time file sharing is more popular than ever.

Back during the Napster battle, the RIAA claimed that the approximately 1.5 million people sharing their music at any given time would destroy the industry, if left unchecked. They won that battle in the courts, and Napster was killed. But file sharing didn’t stop and today, at any given moment, there are approximately 10 million people on the various file sharing networks, and they are all sharing more music then ever before. And yet, sales and profits are increasing. How to explain that? It must be a hard time to be an RIAA PR shill.

Which brings us back to “shipments”. The CEO of the RIAA choose his words very carefully. Why are shipments down? As before, Tom provides the answer:

Have a look here. Music retailers tightened up their ordering methods using a system called SoundScan that tracks CD sales on a per-disc basis. This greatly increases efficiency — a clearer picture of demand means fewer unsold albums have to be returned to the label. Yes, fewer discs are being shipped, but sales are up. Revenues are, too — although of course that was bitten into by the industry coming to a large settlement over price-fixing.

This sort of misdirection on the part of the RIAA goes beyond PR, and into plain dishonesty.