The problem with that is that they're "not" the musicians songs. A large percent of the time the record companies own the rights to the songs. The record companies are money grubbing jerks, who at least IMHO deserve to go through some finacial hardship if it makes them realize they need to change things.
On amazon.com I can buy "Oops...I did it again" for $15 or I can buy "Two Towers" for $20. Can you tell me which of these two productions cost more to produce (by several hundred million dollars)? Which physical storage media costs more to manufacture? Which physical media takes longer to produce? How about packaging? Which is advertised more on television? The cd should cost $5. (And I still wouldn't buy it, although a good cd I would buy.) Also, when I buy "Two Towers" Mr. Jackson gets some of that money. When I buy "Oops...I did it again" do you think Britney sees anything?
That said, people still shouldn't download songs from the net in place of going out and buying music. But if the record companies want me to go out and buy music, they should slash cd prices drastically. At present, I buy maybe 1 cd a month, because it's a complete rip off but I need to feed the addiction. If cds cost less, maybe even $8, I would feel like I wasn't being robbed and would buy *a lot* more music.
Here's a link about a study done recently by Harvard
And
here's an excellent article by Orson Scott Card on the whole issue.
