Almost every HipHop forum has about 5 threads about the sales of any given artist during their opening week. Stans and Haters alike will use the record sales of an artist to their advantage in an argument. Hate an artist that went Platinum? It’s likely you’ll be yelling that sales don’t matter. Hate an artist that flopped? Then you’ll be posting their numbers all over the place the moment you get the chance. Not only is this a silly thing to do (since when does how much an artist sell mean anything to the everyday person? do you see a cut of it?), but in this day and age, Nielson’s Soundscan is an inaccurate way of judging the popularity of an artist.

If you own a computer, chances are you use Itunes. Those chances are even higher if you also own an iPod. Why does this matter? Well because pretty much everyone who has their music collection in digital (typically mp3) format knows it’s a better experience. Now, I don’t mean experience in that the sound quality is better, because it isn’t, CDs are much higher quality. When I say better experience, I mean being able to mix and match songs from different albums, different artist, and different genres to form your own playlist. I mean having a copy of your favorite 3 songs from a CD (since we know artists don’t put out full CDs of banging tracks anymore) on your computer, iPod, and in-car mp3 player. I don’t know many people who own actual portable CD players and use them anymore. Whenever I buy a CD, it’s popped right into my computer and ripped into iTunes. I don’t do this to illegally share the music, but to have more control over the music I like. Digital music has allowed us to enjoy the music we like in ways we never could before.

With the digital music craze catching on quickly, it makes sense that more and more people are finding easier ways to get their music. Gone are the days that most of us rush out to buy a CD only to rip it to our computers and mp3 players, because we can simply download it. I don’t mean bootleg it either, I mean there’s places like the iTunes store, Napster, and Rhapsody that offer completely legal downloads of your favorite singles and full CDs. Obviously these downloads are not recorded by Nielson’s Soundscan system and therefore do not reflect in the weekly record sales totals.

Continuing with that idea, Diddy has sold around 170,000 CDs his first week according to Soundscan, and yet, this very week, diddy is #1 and #3 (explicit and clean versions respectively) for that very same CD. He’s also #8 for the special edition of the same album which includes a video. And if we take a look at that same chart, gasp there’s Mr. Banks there at #5. Look again and you’ll see Lupe Fiasco (another artist highly criticized for his sales) at #6 and #9.

The industry is changing, and we all know that organizations like the RIAA are not yet up to date with those changes. However, we as individuals can and should be. I’m not saying we should, but if we must judge artists based on their record sales, we should NOT follow companies like the RIAA and Nielson, and start thinking more conventionally.