One interesting aspect is that the market was going to peak and crash regardless of P2P, CD-R burning, or whatever. CDs were the first mass-market audio format

One interesting aspect is that the market was going to peak and crash regardless of P2P, CD-R burning, or whatever. CDs were the first mass-market audio format that weren't going to wear out through normal use. In a related matter, this made them very viable for used sales-- buying secondhand LPs or tape is a crapshoot by comparison. So you'd end up with a very clear curve on the valuable back-catalog sales-- ramping up as CD players became affordable, then omnipresent, and then trailing off once the market was primarily composed of replacements for damaged discs and a small amount of new consumer discovery. The industry's alternatives were limited: * Try to get people to re-buy their collection again with SACD, DVD-audio, etc. * Ever broader catalogs hoping people will keep buying. Neither was sustainable. Even if people went all-in on SACD, it would have just kicked the can 10 years down the road. And trying to constantly groom new acts is expensive, risky, and eventually consumers say "I've got more recorded music than I know what to do with" and stop buying.