Spinning the unspinnable

I love it when somebody tries to make a disaster sound good. Album sales are down 4.2% this year, this is the fourth year of the past five that sales have declined, and what's the industry spin?

The decline reflects in part a dearth of big hits compared to the same period in 2005, which saw Mariah Carey and rapper 50 Cent each release multi-platinum sellers.

"Considering that you haven't had a 50 Cent to be the Pied Piper during the first half of the year or a Norah Jones the year before that, being behind 4 percent in album sales is really not that bad," said Geoff Mayfield, director of charts for music tracker Billboard.

Uh, I have news for you. Yes, it's bad.

I have this image of Zinedine Zidane's agent trying to sell an endorsement deal: "Hey, other than the head-butt, he had a really great World Cup."