The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) releases all kinds of data related to sales.  It is also an organization that has quite a bit of power with the Canadian Government.

Michael Geist has an interesting piece on interpreting CRIA sales data!  It is an industry I know very little about and I would probably have just accepted their reported numbers as I would not have had the contextual knowledge to frame what they were saying otherwise!

Numbers are tricky rascals at best! Especially when an industry is trying to lobby for its own interests and at times politicians just believe any ole number thrown at them!  Worse the wrong numbers, or numbers out of context get picked up by newswires and get repeated at nauseam!  Just depends who’s ear a particular industry has I guess and how much homework a reporter does.