Well there's something to be said of owning an original eddition of a book or CD, because at some point it will become public domain and the rarity alone will add value (especially since it won't become public domain for more than a century). I always get the idea that the original publisher will pay more attention to detail and accuracy than a third party reproducer will, and that is important too. You can't fault the music industry for creating quality packaging, even when the contents do not fulfill the promises the package makes.
The simple fact is that there are a lot of consumers who take responsibility for their purchases, so they do research and they shop around. A new CD might be advertized in every magazine and on every radio station, and it might be downloaded on the net a lot too, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it has any inherent value. That can only be determined by actually hearing the CD. Those kind of consumers buy a lot more CD's then they get credit for.
And there's the people who don't buy many CD's anyway. They get a few albums on the net and then pick one or two that they want on a hardcopy, so they buy the CD. If they hadn't downloaded the music first they never would have considered buying it. Finickey people like these buy more CD's as a group then they get credit for as well. To shut them out is to shut out an entire market.
I think the music industry has missed the boat on using MP3's as promotional samples. There was a time when they could have done it that way, but now people know they can get a free full-length high-quality rip instead of paying for a sample. It's odd to be demonized by the RIAA for promoting music in a way they can't (or won't) try.
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