Artists traditionally make most of their money from live concert performances. Unless an artist is huge, record sale proceeds usually go straight back to the record company. Digital music is best viewed as a free commercial for an artist's live performance, but the artist would derive little benefit even if the industry somehow found a way to monetize the transfer of every single wayward MP3. The record companies would benefit immensely, however - taking us straight back to the good old days of the 70's when they ruled the entertainment world - so they keep trying to do the impossible.
As for smaller artists who are trying to sell digital music on their own web sites, that's wishful thinking. There is just too much free product out there already. Without the aforementioned value-adds, sales of strictly digital music will be minimal at best.
That's what we hear from folks who never create and don't work w/ products in the public domain. In real life a lot of us do quite well thank you. It's hard to understand in the old mindset --for example how can Red Hat be worth $13B and gross hundreds of millions w/ sales growing 20% annually while their main product is giving away software that's make by folks that write the code for free?
Things are what they are. Many artists don't sweat copyrights, and do quite well. Meanwhile the RIAA and the MPAA are thugs who're backed w/ my taxes.