Thenextweb: The number of consumers using peer-to-peer (P2P) services to download music declined 17 percent between 2011 and 2012. As a result, the volume of illegally downloaded music files from P2P services declined 26 percent compared to the previous year.
These latest figures come from NPD’s annual music study, which shows P2P wasn’t the only sharing activity to shrink. In fact, it looks like music sharing as an activity in general is dying out, at least if you look at some of the most popular ways of doing so:
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... but when kids/teens who are fans with little money do it, and use the money they save for visiting some overpriced concert or buy an overpriced shirt, then they are bad guys.
I really wish artists would just cut out the big evil greedy middle man, who is completely unnecessary in this day and age anyway, and thus start selling their music for much more reasonable prices.
The smaller ones that get jipped by publishers simply "pretend" to care to keep publishers happy. Otherwise you are right, they rather you spend your money on their merchandise and concerts because they actually get that money.
Often times upcoming bands (ESPECIALLY if they have no publisher/label) they will release their music to P2P and Youtube etc on their own. Or they will let it get popular because it creates fans, then those fans go to their concerts or start buying things.