Those that distribute the music to such places as the retail stores own the rights to the music. As you can see by the statistics from the Recording Industry Association of America these distributors are losing billions of dollars in sales. They blame this on the easy access of music on the internet. The internet has made music easily accessible and cheaper to get. It also allows for quick distribution of the music files.
Modems make it easier and faster to download songs off the internet.
The faster the modem, the faster you can get the music. Also, blank CDs allow for more music to be stored on one CD due to the compressed files that the MP3s are. You could have the same amount of music on 1 CD that you would have if you bought 10 CDs in the record store. That gets pretty expensive after awhile. The internet allows consumers to have a cheaper way to get the music they want.