The music industry is in the sorry state that it's in for two reasons.
1)
Simon Cowell has too big a hand in selling us identikit / CouldBeAnybody rubbish.
2)
The record companies thought that the CD was the best way to extort bigger money out of us all. Unfortunately, with it being a digital medium, it only took hours to work out how to rip and share exact copies of it. From that point on - one copy went a very long way. The companies only have themselves to blame. They should have made it uncopyable. This is what is making record shops die out (as well as online retail like amazon). I generally like to see what I'm buying first, but rarely get the chance these days. I order new things in advance.