RIAA between rock and a hard place

From Boing Boing!.

Long story short. Record labels have deals with artists that they get money from licenced sales more than they get from normal sales.

Music bought from digital store is "licenced", which means that us consumers cant copy, give it to friend etc. But when giving royalties to music artists, Sony et co bills them under "sales" which means we can copy, give them to friends etc.

So, when we get music from net, artist is screwed, either by us (illegal downloads) or by record label (legal downloads).