Michael Geist has noted that Cartel marketing shill NPD is full of hooey. You may recall that I had something of a rant on last year when NPD managed to buffalo Greg Sandoval. This time Geist calls them on it, directly.

NPD continues to produce shill material for the Cartel, pushing its anti-sharing and anti-customer messaging. Last time I pointed to how they were drawing wrong conclusions from their data; this time Geist points out they can't even do basic math. And of course getting math wrong means you get your message wrong, in this case hilariously the opposite of what they're paid to shill.

The root of the issue is that NPD are trying to show that using P2P systems (presumably to share music) causes one to spend less on music, measured by spending on CDs, downloads, music service subscriptions, and so on. But aside from getting simple addition wrong (by double-counting a subtotal) what Geist points out is that NPD's own data show that P2P users spend roughly 50% more, particularly if you don't accept NPD's dubious assertion that spending on merchandise and concert tickets doesn't really count - because somehow being a fan who downloads music is separable from being a fan who buys tickets and merch.

Yeah, right. When you all get back from fairytale land, let me know. Meantime I continue to be disappointed by any serious journalist who publishes anything NPD produces, except for mockery purposes.