Music piracy rose to epidemic levels at the beginning of the 2000s (although, according to Wired, those days are now over). There were many causes of this growth in piracy -- high speed internet access, easy-to-use P2P software -- but perhaps the biggest accelerator of music piracy was two-fold: the emergence of devices that allowed us to easily copy and then consume music (namely CD-burners, and then MP3 players) away from the computers we downloaded them on, and the reluctance of the record industry to embrace new technology.
In other words, once people had the hardware for consuming digital music, the record industry failed to give listeners the digital music they wanted at a reasonable price and in an easy-to-access centralized location. The same factors that lead to mass music piracy
