Is DRM the best way to save the music industry?

The technological advances of the last decade has innovated the way we use and purchase our music. The birth of the MP3 player allowed a significant decrease in the file size of music, therefore opening up a whole new way of distributing music by downloading from the Internet. This new format of music files opened the door to file sharing sites being introduced which some argue led to a 'culture of piracy', where people could now download tracks for free. The music industry saw this as theft and as a breech of the copyright laws to protect artists and as a result the DRM was introduced to try and 'save' the music industry. The way that DRM focuses on protecting the property aspect of music and tries to teach that file sharing is 'stealing' is only going to reach out to a number of people but not the majority. Instead, DRM should support this new entertainment culture and introduce other techniques that would go relatively unnoticed by the consumer, such as taxing on the products that allow files to be shared and discs to be burned. Instead of asking is DRM the best way to save the music industry, we should be asking does the industry need to be saved? A lot of the people using these sites to so to sample music before purchasing because many get annoyed at the cost of CD when there is only about 2 good tracks on them. It is even suggested that it would take 5000 downloads to displace one sale so i think that the music industry should embrace this new culture and accept that people nowadays have many options when listening and purchasing music. Overall the DRM is not the best way to save the music industry because most people are not using these sites to pirate music but to sample content and many people still go out and by Cd's as it is always nice to have something tangible especially if you are a big follower of that artist.