They did this to themselves. Before DRM protection the number of people that downloaded instead of buying was much lower. Also those "Legal" downloads, that they are so proud of, have the quality of a 1980's mixtape recording from the radio. Why not sell FLAC quality that people can then burn to disk (Oh, I forgot. Then the people would not have to buy each song more than once, if they want it both on CD and their harddrive)

Seriously. Try an experiment. Buy a song online, and then buy the CD containing the song. Listen to both and compare.

BTW far from all people do it illegally. Many contries don't have the strict laws that the US "RIAA controlled" government have made.

Don't get me wrong here, I still buy music even if I download too, but will never ever pay 99cents for a crappy quality song. Also I will never buy a CD where there is copyprotection on preventing me to enjoy the music on my PC as well. (Well actually I did buy one by mistake once, but never again)