For those of you who caught wind of the Register’s report yesterday that iTunes music sales were “collapsing,” you may want to pop over to Josh Bernoff’s blog to get a more reality-based version of the story. Bernoff is the source of the Forrester report that sparked this minor panic (shares of Apple stock fell nearly 3% yesterday as other news organizations piled onto the story) and he has some not-too-kind words for the Register and the way it twisted his findings.

Bernoff writes:

A UK outfit called The Register and Bloomberg decided to dive in and highlight one finding of the report — that iTunes sales had dropped in the first six months of this year. We got treated to wonderful headlines about iTunes sales “collapsing” and “dropping” and “plummeting” and so on. Now for the record, iTunes sales are not collapsing. Our credit card transaction data shows a real drop between the January post-holiday peak and the rest of the year, but with the number of transactions we counted it’s simply not possible to draw this conclusion . . . as we pointed out in the report. But that point was just too subtle to get into these articles.

And more reality:

Now, you can’t unring the bell. But I will try to focus you on the truth here, which is this: iTunes sales are leveling off, the Journal did an article about it last Friday with data from Soundscan. Apple is not in trouble — it makes its money mostly from iPods, and iTunes is just a way to make that experience better. It’s the music industry that has to worry, since the $1 billion a year or so from iTunes, globally, doesn’t nearly make up for even the drop in CD sales in the US, which are now down $2.5 billion from where they were.

When I read the Register’s report yesterday, I thought it seemed pretty overblown, especially since the Register’s not usually shy about taking every opportunity to dump on Apple. It’s good to know I can trust still my instincts once in a while.

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