Does Online Music Piracy destroy the Industry?

Record institutions have been recorded to saying various artist, some underground while most mainstream superstars will continue to lose money if audiences result to piracy as their means to listening to music. This statement cannot be faulted because a simple maths equation will show, somewhere down the line artist will lose millions of pounds collectively as a result of world-wide audiences choosing to illegally download their music for free and not to consume their music through a payment such as iTunes.  The benefit to the consumer is that they get to listen to their favourite artist on repeat completely free. The negative side to the consumer—nothing, the blasé attitude of ‘What’s free is worth having’ is adopted by the cheap consumers. Many audiences would argue the poor state of the economy is a deterrent for those who don't mind paying for their music.  However there are other means on the internet that allow audiences to listen to music for free but once they want to transport the file the website www.spotify.com prevents them from doing so without a payment. Some legal authorities have even suggested taking away the internet from those who consistently break the law and illegally download, but there is still a possibility that music piracy would exist sans the internet because before the revolution of the internet came, people used to burns CDs, record from the radio onto their cassette tapes. Is this any less of a threat? Arguably no if thousands resort to using this means if the internet privilege was taken away. A global superstar that is ’Prince’ showed the U.K. how to combat the terrors of piracy and that’s by giving your music away for FREE! A Prince album was put into the Sun tabloid and every reader received his music for free (cost of purchasing the newspaper at hand) and Prince made money back through endorsements and sold-out tour venues, arguably his walking advert allowed a greater market share to listen to his music and those who liked it bought a concert ticket that cost triple the CD album costs, probably starting at £50. Although Prince lost out on the sales of his album he may have generated profit through the more expensive concert tickets. Bargain really!