Consider this: The VAST majority of Internet users connect via dial-up networking. Dial-up! 56kbs, unreliable dial-up! It would take years to download enough content to equal the amount of lost sales the recoring industy is reporting for one year.
The fact is that the quality of the music (vomit) they've been producing is just sad. Would you go out and buy a CD or tape that you know beforehand sucks? Probably not!
When a company produces a lousy product, people generally won't spend their hard-earned dollars to own it. The music industry is bound to the law of supply and demand, same as every other business.
More and more, independent artists are able to scrape up the cash to not only produce their own music with production values equal to that of a big studio, but to buy commercial time on cable TV to market it.
The recording industry is just going to have to accept the fact that they have no one to blame for their so-called losses but themselves. Dial-up... (snicker)