Oh I dunno, because the artists aren't getting paid jack squat when people use those "free" options. People wonder why music sucks these days. Maybe it's because there's no incentive for talented people to get into the music industry anymore with everyone thinking they're entitled to free music?
As if $99 cents to $1.29 for a song isn't cheap enough with full albums now regularly selling for 20-40% less and still there are bad sales numbers. Now I'll admit, the move away from popular formats like rock to more divisive ones like hip-hop probably also is to blame (i.e. country sales have stayed far more even as their music labels haven't abandoned their country artists like the other major labels have abandoned rock music, which was a mainstream stable from the '50 through the '90s), but certainly, the days of people buying entire albums on any kind of regular basis seems to have been utterly destroyed by online music. Thus, an artist these days can actually have a #1 hit and still be poor given the ridiculously low royalties paid through traditional labels.
The sad thing is that the Internet and self-publication should make this less of a problem. But in reality, as I've found out myself as a hobby, it takes a lot of promotion to get people to even know you exist. Even companies like Pandora have to pick YOU up for you to appear as a "similar" artist that might get some plays. Sadly, stupid videos of "jack arse" type stunts have a far better chance of getting hits or going viral on something like YouTube than a home-made music video. I often wonder how much great music is out there I would like if I only knew it existed. Yes, really popular artists can often make money touring, but lesser known artists would be tossing even more money down the drain. The system is in dire straits.
