Yes, it's always seemed odd to me, from a moral point of view, that it's perfectly fine for them to copy music easily (and hence make huge profits) but it's not ok for us to copy music.
If you look at the history of the music business, musicians used to not make very much money and only got paid for gigs. If you were good you could ask for more from your punters per gig, and if you were REALLY good you could hold concerts and get paid much more. Seems we should go back to that model - musicians and the music industry get rewarded far beyond what they're worth in my opinion.
Yes, the problem is not the musicians per-se, it's the music industry that surrounds them. They make a fortune copying and selling music, and get all upset about it when other people want to copy music.
I know there's a lot of effort that goes into creating and producing an album, but that's a pittance compared to how much an album will make. And it's not like they lose money investing in lots of different bands and only a few are successful - if they're not 100% sure the album will sell (say it's a new artist) then they only lend the money to the artists. It's a loan that carries interest and has to be paid back.
If you look at the history of the music business, musicians used to not make very much money and only got paid for gigs. If you were good you could ask for more from your punters per gig, and if you were REALLY good you could hold concerts and get paid much more. Seems we should go back to that model - musicians and the music industry get rewarded far beyond what they're worth in my opinion.