Record companies hear what's going on, and act accordingly. Rather than trying to outlaw mp3s or make cds copy protected, record companies are hard at work on making mp3s of their own. Nobody is going to pay to download music. That's the reason mp3s caught on in the first place. Somebody will get a copy of the file somewhere, post it on an ftp site, and things will go along just like they did before.
Albums are an important part of an artist's expression.
Anybody familiar with Better than Ezra knows that each album represents an important stage in the band's development. I'd go so far as to call it the holy trinity. Each one of Primus's albums marks a damn-near 180 degree turn from the last release. And the people that really like these bands, and really care about the music that the band is putting out listens to the whole album. The album has a theme, a theme that is developed and played out through the course of the album.