Read: [Moby's "Pearl Jam Effect"]

In recent weeks, pop-techno-artist-extraordinaire Moby has written in his online diary about what he sees as a phenomenon in the music industry that he dubs "The Pearl Jam Effect". Basically, he claims that bands that have a more technologically-savvy fanbase sell fewer records than other bands, largely because that fanbase is more likely to download and burn a CD than buy it in a store.

I think some of what Moby is saying might be true. But I think he's missing the target somewhat.

If you're going to use any band as a case example of this phenomenon, Pearl Jam is not the band to choose. Why? Because they don't play by the rules that most bands use in selling a record.

I assume Moby attached Pearl Jam to his theory because of the comparatively lackluster sales of their last album, Binaural. Binaural sold just under a million copies, which, on the list of Pearl Jam album sales, slides it safely at the bottom. (To date, it's the only non-live Pearl Jam album to not go platinum.)

In the case of Binaural, though, I don't believe that downloading and burning is to blame for the album not going platinum. There were many other factors involved.

For starters, Pearl Jam chose a decidedly non-single song to release as the first single from the album. "Nothing As It Seems" is a moody, modestly slow song. It's a good song, but it's a good album cut, not something that is hooky enough for Joe Average to run screaming to his local music store to pick it up. It's just not a song that lights up the request lines.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, Pearl Jam as a band refuses to do much in the way of promotion. They granted a handful of radio and tv interviews and played Letterman, but that was about it. They did a single two-leg American tour. No videos, no radio festivals, none of the things that other bands do to really prime the pump.

And why not? After selling millions upon millions of copies of their first three albums, Pearl Jam is in a unique position where they can make whatever music they want to make and not have to worry about it selling a bazillion copies. At the same time, making the music they want to make has brought them a rather devoted fanbase, that I would assume is probably about a half a million strong.

Doing very little in the way of promotion and selling nearly a million records is quite an accomplishment. Hundreds of indie bands do about the same amount of promotion and can't sell a thousand records. If Pearl Jam had gone the whole nine yards and still only sold a million copies, then I might buy into the theory a little more.

To some degree, I also think Moby is jumping the gun when using Weezer as an example. What he doesn't realize is that Weezer's last record, "The Green Album", moved just about the same number of copies during its first week of release as Maladroit did. It sold slowly, but consistently, throughout the year to eventually go platinum. I have a feeling that Maladroit will do the same, particularly as the second and third singles get released and as they kick off their summer tour.

And while I can't argue against the statement that there are probably a lot of burned copies of Weezer's records out there, it wouldn't surprise me if there were just as many burned copies of Pink's albums out there. Think of it as "The Embarassment Burn". There are bound to be a lot of people out there who have heard her songs and like them, but are uncomfortable enough with the lower "hip" value to actually be caught in a music store buying her record. So they download the songs they like and burn them to disc.

I'm not sure that he is, but it if he's making the case for "The Pearl Jam Effect" to explain the dive in his own record sales, I think he's missing the point entirely. His last record, Play, sold very slowly upon release. It wasn't until all of those songs were used in commercials again and again that people started picking up the album.

He may be analyzing record sales and believing that all of the two million people who bought Play are now Moby fans and will eventually go out and buy 18. And since they're not, they must be burning the album instead.

But I don't believe that for a second. Unless your record was bought by two million teenagers, you're not necessarily selling to a devoted fanbase that will run out and buy anything you put out. Instead, you've tapped into the majority of record buyers who buy "popular" records - records that they hear enough in their daily life to leave a mark. That type of music buyer doesn't typically go for a second helping right away, unless the next record has a song or two that invades their life as strongly as on the last record. (And I honestly believe that Play sold to that audience.)

Moby has stated from the outset that he's not planning to go the commercial route that he did with Play. Which means that the only song most people have heard from 18 is "We Are All Made of Stars". And, in my own opinion, that song isn't nearly as catchy as any of the true singles off of Play. So the average music fan hasn't yet had a reason to run out and buy 18. (This doesn't even include the fact that many people who bought Play had heard a majority of the record before doing so, thanks to all of those commercials. In this day and age, it's a rare thing for a music buyer to buy a record and have heard more than three songs or so from it.)

The other reason I don't think "The Pearl Jam Effect" relates to 18 is because of the differing target audience. Though I have no demographic evidence, I would wager that the bulk of the audience that bought Play were thirty-somethings. Play got a lot of attention on Adult Contemporary and Top 40 stations, which often skew older in terms of audience. But the bulk of the "technologically-savvy" audience are college age.

There's a part of me that believes his initial point holds some truth. Yes, any band targeting a college-age audience is likely to be more susceptible to burning than one that targets an older or younger audience. But I think it's a phenomenon that relates more to the average music listener than to the people who really call themselves "fans" of a band. I just can't fathom, particularly in the case of Pearl Jam, that any devoted fan would be caught dead downloading the record and not eventually buying it. But I could easily see someone with only a passing curiosity for Pearl Jam doing so.

So, to some degree, Moby's theory might hold. But even if you total it all up, I find it hard to believe that there are enough people in that category to be skewing the sales as much as Moby claims. I just think there are too many other explanations for the specific sales trends he's spotting to be able to hold them all under the umbrella of "The Pearl Jam Effect".