P, I can tell you've never used these services. Even though we could afford any CD we want, my wife was goofing around with Morpheus a few weeks ago on one of our home computers just for the heck of it. Guess what? Even though we have a high-speed connection, the other side is usually dial-up. After screwing around one Sat morning to get a few songs, she finally grew bored and hasn't been back since. There is a market for micro-payments that assure a decent connection and without a bunch of spy-ware. Hell, I'm still running ad-aware every few days to get rid of the registry entries.
It gets worse: the downloader will find that those MP3's are as often or not recorded at very low bit rates, or even filled with unplayable trash. The culprits are both freeloading downloaders and RIAA hacks to discredit the file-trading networks. Compared with this "competition", Apple's buck-a-track scheme starts to look good. You can preview Apple's tracks, so you need pay only for what you really want.
There is a larger issue here. The real problem with file-trading networks is that none of them made any attempt to bring the artists on board by acknowledging their rights by, say, cutting them on on the adware revenue. Although Apple is buying rights from record labels right now, there's nothing to prevent it from dealing with the artists directly, thereby crashing the record industry for good.