I have to say I find it odd that with the growth of Bit Torrent and illegal file sharing, the music companies don't embrace the online distribution technologies available to them. Until Pirate Bay is shut down, there will always be people who ask why DRM free full versions of songs can't be bought online, when they can already be downloaded illegally.
You can't stop piracy. A proportion of the population will always do it. But what you can do is embrace those members of the buying public that believe in legitimate music purchases and offer them something so good and so easy to use that they have no need to steal and feel appreciated by the music companies for their custom. Honest consumers need to be brought into the fold. I believe that in so doing, music companies would see a rise in their revenues that would outweigh the losses they believe they're suffering through piracy. At least by enough to make the exercise worthwhile and certainly this would help protect their business moving forwards through the recession.
The iron grip on music rights (such as that used by monthly subscription music services where, when you stop paying, your entire library disappears) is a bad way forward. The way I'd like to see it going is towards a high quality (lossless) downloadable, easy to use and DRM free music service where, for a fair price (something between 50p and £1 per track) you are encouraged to buy more music and membership of various clubs (with future discounts etc etc) would ensue if you bought an album's worth or more, etc etc. There is so much more value added that record companies could do if they tried.
Bottom line, the consumer is where the record company's revenue comes from. Embrace the consumer and don't alienate him and that will reduce the amount of piracy suffered.