You can release advance copies (I don't understand why they can't just leave the 'this is property of suchandsuch records' idents over these copies?) or you can keep a major new release under wraps, but your your average low-income music fan is always going to wonder why they should bother when they can have it for free.
The only way the record industry is going to win back their former customer base is to compete with the pirates, rather than sue them, and this is happening (Nick Cave streaming his new album in it's entirety on myspace, for example) - but how on earth are you going to compete with a bottomless well of free music? Offer me something that the pirates cannot, you already have guaranteed CD-quality sound, but mp3-deafened teenagers need more incentive these days.
It's like with iTunes, nobody wanted to have anything to do with it initially (this would have been 2001 I think?) but after years of loss and thousands of redundancies everyone hopped on the gravy train - just too late.
Obviously the big labels are still funding the aforementioned expensive recording process, but the real money for big bands now is in live performances...
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