Gosh, sounds awful. Anyways, on to the point at hand, Napster. Talk to some some people in the recording industry and you will soon find, that in the current market, most artists do not make any money off of CD's and Cassetes. Their labels reap the profits if any from them. Artists only begin to realize payment from making CD's once they've sold well over a million copies, and even then they usually have to sell over five or ten million to receive anything substantial for it.
Artists still make most of their money the way they always have, touring and live venues.
Record companies use money from Album and Singles sales, and projected sales of the like, as budgets for other promotions, such as music videos. It is not fair to the artist. However selling a CD to the consumer for twenty times the cost of making the CD isn't exactly fair either. This is also essentially theft. Record companies have stolen millions of dollars from consumers with practices like these.