inthemix number 1 in music - or are they?

According to Neilsen they are - from AdNews ...

"inthemix.com.au takes #1 for music

SYDNEY: Independent music community website inthemix.com.au has taken the top position as Australia’s highest ranking music website, according to Nielsen Online. With 18.8% share of the online music category, inthemix.com.au reached 240,000 monthly unique browsers in January - the only publisher in the top five to record positive growth. Managing director Neil Ackland commented: “Most of the bigger publishers have the challenge of trying to be everything to everyone, where as we’ve just remained 100% focused on being the best within our niche.” inthemix.com.au is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sound Alliance, Australia’s largest independent online publisher."

Lets look a little closer shall we. Are they really Number 1 or is this smart spin doctoring ...

Well ... according to Neilsen Market Intellgence (side side measurement) inthemix are indeed the number 1 PURE music play ... ninemsn and Fairfax Music properties are included in their overall Entertainment figure ... so it's hard to really know who is the leader here. The interesting thing is publishers have to PAY to be on Neilsen Market Intelligence data ... which means, you guessed it, many sites are not included.

But according to Neilse Netview - the panel based online measurement arm of Neilsen, inthemix aren't even in the top 10 - falling behind AOL, Bigpond Music, MCM, Yahoo!, sanity, Lyrics A-Z, MTV International, Warner Music, Sony Music, Lyrics Freak and ARIA Charts ...

How can this be I hear some of you ask ... well Netview takes into account ALL sites and Market Intelligence is purely the sites that pay to be included in the measurement.

This isn't taking anything away from inthemix - it's a great site and I have been using it for the past 8 years, it's just their claim (which is ultimately to get some PR and noise out there) isn't exactly as cut and dry as it's claimed.

I am also confused as to why AdNews publishes stats without doing their own research ...