When we were kids, we found which artists we liked - and which albums to buy - by swapping and home taping music. It never killed sales - it was a form of advertising.
I can see why the music companies are so worried about the wholescale swapping of music online - but I think their approach is inherently wrong.
If I were a music company, what I would actually do is do a deal with the makers of music compression formats - mp3, wma, ogg, etc - to push to reduce the sound quality of sound via the compression systems. Not a huge amount - just enough to make the original product better quality enough to buy.
2c.
