I have no concrete facts, but my intuition tells me that commodity CD-Rs played as big a role. I think that whole line about illegal downloads is industry prop

I have no concrete facts, but my intuition tells me that commodity CD-Rs played as big a role. I think that whole line about illegal downloads is industry propaganda. You never hear about how illegally burned CDs brought down the industry, when everybody I know was ripping CDs from each other for a period of years. Why? Because record labels' parent companies were the ones selling CD burners hand over fist.