So, in a real “sky is falling” sort of piece, the Register reported yesterday that iTunes Music Store sales were “collapsing,” purportedly based on research from one of those “never in doubt, seldom right” firms (this time, it was Forrester). Predictably, the story was picked up by some big blogs. Trouble is, it’s bullshit, as several have pointed out.

We’re sure that the idea of something like iTMS sales tanking is a great way to drive traffic to your site, but wouldn’t it be nice of researchers and tech journalists cared about whether what they ran was accurate? As the aforelinked debunking noted, iTunes is still one of the biggest music vendors in the country — online or off. They rival the Best Buys of the world, something that no other online vendor can claim, and have sold better than a billion tracks. That’s not exactly “collapse,” now, is it?

Update: Techdirt has more. Unlike Forrester, et. al., they seem to mostly be right.