They wouldn't have bought it anyway (Score 1)

The extremely singleminded music industry is targeting their pop music at kids in their lower teens.

Here are the facts that follows from this:

FACT 1: Kids dont have money to buy music
FACT 2: Kids must have the latest music to stay popular

Following from this are three alternatives:

ALT 1: Download ("pirate") music from the Internet
ALT 2: Steal music by shoplifting CDs
ALT 3: Rich parents buy it for them

Now, except ALT 3, this results are that kids do get their music anyway and the music industry does not get a single penny. This is well known.

BUT -- and think about this -- it does not matter since they would not have paid anyway!

One may argue about the ethics in this (ie getting stuff for free), but in practice it does not matter since the industry would not have received any money anyway.

Granted, shoplifting is expensive since kids steal physical things and that is a loss for the industry. But the Internet-download-thing will just continue to happen because kids dont have money.

How to solve this?

Use the silver bullet of course: Target a different audience, for instance adults which have jobs and can pay for things they want.