There is a growing school of thought that reggae sales, as represented by sales generated by Soundscan, may not be accurate reflection of overall reggae and dancehall sales in the United States.

"Reggae is selling and doing well too. VP would want us to believe that it is not so that they can lower the price that they pay to
artistes and producers for their work. Reggae is powerful and continues to do well, even though we don't have the megasellers
from a few years ago," No Doubt Records chief executive officer Kemar McGregor told one876entertainment.com after reading the article written last week.

"There are several mom and pops stores, small establishments who sell reggae music who are not connected to the Soundscan network
throughout the United States. Just check how many reggae stores are in the US, not many of them can afford the machines to register their
sales like the big retailers like Walmart, Walgreens, Target, Best Buy and so on. So don't believe it, reggae is doing well," he said.

He also criticised VP's business ethics charging that they are underpaying record producers for their work.

"Look at Reggae Gold, one of their biggest sellers every year, I feel that Soundscan report is wrong, number one, and furthermore
VP can afford to pay the producers more. Look at it, if they sold 46,000 copies, just multiply that by 12, you get 552,000, that's how much they could make according to Soundscan, not even taking into account the small reggae stores. Look at how much VP pays the producers, US$5,000 per track, and if you have say 13 tracks, that is 85,000, then you add their shipping costs and packaging and they are making a killing," McGregor said.

"They should pay us fairly for the music that we make because we incur great costs for electricity, paying to voice the artistes and so on, that's why I prefer to own my productions so that when a major label comes knocking, I am in full control," he said.

One of the biggest sellers this year has been VP's insanely popular Reggae Gold series with the 2007 edition selling over 46,000 copies after 50 weeks on the chartVP's Strictly the Best series continue to do well with volume 36 cresting sales of over 18,000 copies after 78 weeks on the chart, while volume 37 has sold over 8,000 copies after 27 weeks.

As it relates to the local music industry, there is a growing trend among producers to cut the amount of productions, and some have even taken the position of not recording artistes signed to VP.

"It no mek no sense record nobody from VP because when we do a song wid dem artiste and it buss, dem come in and say dem own the artiste voice and dem never tell we fi go record dem artiste," one producer confided on the condition of anonymity. "Right now, is like dem a try sign everyone fi capture the reggae market, but mi nah build no artiste who sign to VP, dem need fi know say new stars and singers ah go come 'bout and we nah mek nobody rob we no more."