I’ve listened to tons of copyrighted music just on YouTube. That means there must be a million places out there where you can get it for free and in high quality if you want it. I don’t see how the music industry is going to survive, at least in the area of recorded music. It seems like the only money will be in live performances.
Here is a Wikipedia list of all time top selling albums. No albums selling more than 20,00,000 since 2004, and only five with 20,000,000+ sales this entire decade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_worldwide
Just listening to music in various media outlets probably doesn’t hurt sales that much. Listening on radio was once far bigger than it is now. It’s copying the music rather than buying that will really put the squeeze on the industry.
It will be the Grateful Dead model. The Dead, btw, were the most financially successful music act before Jerry succombed to bodily abuse. Think of them as Estimated Prophets LOL.