Uhh $0.60 of my $0.99 cents per shitty DRM song on iTunes goes to the record label. Those greedy pricks can go die in a fire. I'm not signing to a label for my first album because I'm not interested in feeding corporate greed; I want to reach out to people with music, not into their wallets to buy an executive his new Bentley.
The statistic is pointless, since there is no indication of how much revenue is actually being lost, and it's also no indication of how the artist is supposedly suffering. Funny how the poor, humbled industry is still making millions and the artists pushed through the mass-marketing pipeline seem to be doing fine rolling in their millions. I don't see the @#$^ing Jonas Brothers on the streets for all the illegal music downloading that probably goes on from preteens that don't have the means or care to buy an album.
Any estimation is stupid; you'd have to be estimating the sum total of all data transfer involving copyrighted material from person to person or god knows what else based on arbitrary criteria. I downloaded some System of a Down for free, then ended up buying at least three copies of each album (don't ask why, that's not important), so I'd say the execs more than got their share, and I gave Serj Tankian and Daron Malakian enough for a latte each. Oh and the world didn't implode because I got a song for free.
As someone who is interested in the industry and plans on doing this for a living, I think these people should be ashamed of themselves. Of course I want to make a living, and I want to be paid for my work, but I'm not going to be a naive numberwhore because the industry wants to pile up outrage when pushy execs trying to get artists to sell their souls just aren't enough anymore.