Since the Hi-Fi Cassette Recorder was developed the RIAA has always used a scapegoat as an excuse for a downturn in business during a recession. For years it was home taping. During the contrived home taping crisis the paranoid psychos at the RIAA claimed that little Joey was copying songs and giving them to their friends. The loss in sales was always around 1.5 Billion Dollars with no data to back up their claims. These weasels convinced lawmakers to levy a fee on Hi-Fi Cassettes to be paid to the RIAA even if the purchaser did not use the cassettes to record copyrighted songs. Then came the SCMS to prevent digital copies of digital copies. Then came low cost CDRW Drives to thwarted that copyright protection scheme.
In my opinion the reason that the RIAA fears music downloading is that consumers will have the opportunity to audition a song and if it is truly shitty not purchase a high resolution version of the shitty song. It is like going to the butcher shop and taking a sniff of a chicken you are thinking of purchasing and if it smells fowl not purchasing it.
Downloading is the RIAA's new delusion for lost profits, even though the pop songs that account for most of the record labels profits are broadcast over the top 40 radio stations. With a little work on the part of the consumer, those songs can be simply recorded on a computer hard drive by connecting a radio to the computers sound card input and leaving the computer run 24X7. The RIAA will have no way of detecting that their music has been copied. In fact years ago the major record labels produced propaganda indicating that if it were not for profits from popular music they would not be able to fund their classical divisions.