Scanned vs. Shipped

Well, not all stores scan, and not all CDs shipped sell. Neither of them are particularly great ways to measure, I guess CDs scanned is a bit better.

while neither is 100 percent accurate, cds scanned is at least trying to measure what actual consumers are actually buying. cds shipped measures nothing of the sort.

If the music in question is major-label, the soundscan numbers are usually reasonably close to actual sales, in my experience -- whereas the quantity shipped is usually a huge exaggeration, sionce they're willing to overship huge quantities to inflate sales numbers.

If you're talking something on an indie, though, quantity shipped is more reliable -- or, in a pinch, double the soundscan numbers. That's pretty approximate, and my experience there is limited to U.S. whitey indie-rock stuff; no idea about indie hip-hop or world stuff. Or metal, although I bet indie metal barely registers on soundscan.

Oh, and indie jazz you can pretty much double soundscans, too, or pay attention to quantities shipped (minus a little bit).

Gold, platinum, etc. is based on the number shipped, hence the phrase "Shipped gold, returned platinum."

My old label, when I once checked, had Soundscanned numbers of around just a few hundred with actual sales of 2000 or so, so I don't believe the scanned figure is a terribly accurate picture for "whitey" indie-rock labels. Most small indie stores don't participate in Soundscan, so they have a formula for extrapolating indie sales based on the few that do participate.

Also, there is lots of scanning manipulation for big labels. Stores get paid via free product to scan titles even though these don't represent actual sales.