Can you provide some proof that "pirating" (I hate that word) had severely diminished sold copies? And I don't mean all those "studies" based on the false premise that downloaded records are lost sales.
Other commenters have mentioned about how pirating can increase exposure and in fact increase sales - Breaking Bad (which isn't music) is one big name example of this happening.
In any case, "album sales" is a very one dimensional view of the world. Even if fans were to pirate music, there is no way to pirate live performances - and exposure is one such way to boost sales of live performances so lost sales in albums is a very narrow slice of the entire ecosystem.
No I cannot, but conversely can you prove that is has not?
All I can proffer is anecdote that as bandwidth and the ubiquity of Internet increased over the years, the sales of music via the label I'm involved with diminished. All the while our artists and the label itself became more and more popular, so it seems entirely counter inuitive that sales should have been dropping.
I don't buy music from labels or online shops. I go to either an artists website or somewhere the artists will directly get the money from it or i'll buy albums from shows. I've probably paid for more music in the last few years than I did most of the time as a teenager. I feel a lot better giving my money to people who are more directly involved in creating the music than large companies that produce albums for them. Hell i've even bought some new recently produced vinyl albums in the last couple years. When I was young I refused to use places like hmv so all I did was either pirate or buy music from shows. Now i've replaced pirating with buying music online.
The thing is there's just so much music now. The artists you represent may be more popular but there's so much more competition for people's money. There's music i've bough I enjoy from artists whose shows i'll probably never get to see. I spend a lot of time listening to concerts and such these artists freely post online, i'm enjoying their music, legally, but I haven't paid for it.
There are a lot of things contributing.to lower album sales. Piracy, while i'm sure contributes doesn't seem to be the biggest problem. Plus i've been hearing this since I was a kid and cassette tapes were being blamed for killing the music industry because people could just record anything they want off the radio or a friend's cassette so album sales were dropping.
It is now, but the drop in record sales started before Spotify — it started with Napster and similar services. Spotify grew from a market reaction to those sales lost due to theft.
In any case, "album sales" is a very one dimensional view of the world. Even if fans were to pirate music, there is no way to pirate live performances - and exposure is one such way to boost sales of live performances so lost sales in albums is a very narrow slice of the entire ecosystem.