how has music downloading effected the music industry?

Since I was a small kid, I have watched the way we listen to music change over and over and change excessively.  I remember as a 4 year old sitting around the record player with my sisters, listening to snoopy and alvin records.  I recall McDonald's giving out a record that could be played but was thinner than a floppy disc. 
Then as I got older, about elementary age, it was all casette tapes.  I grew up having to constantly rewind and fast forward tapes to get to the right song, constantly having to pull out tapes and wind them back in with a pencil.
Around '91, my friend's dad started collecting CD's.  I was at her house and this was I believe the first time I have ever seen a compact disc, and I was mesmerized.  It was shiny and sleek.  A couple years later, my older sister got a CD player, and it was the first one anyone in our family owned.  This is about the time CD's started to blow up.  ('93-ish.) 
I became a teenager in the mid-90's and a huge mallrat.  And the malls were full of RecordTowns, Sam Goody's, and other chain stores of that kind.  I resisted the CD thing for a while, still carrying around a walkman until '01.  By then I was switching between a discman and a walkman.  I was still making mixed tapes for people until '02 or '03, and the silly thing was few of my friends still had tape decks anymore. 
The internet started blowing up about '95, and with that music was now turning the way to digital.  People stopped buying hard copies of CD's at Sam Goody and were able to buy or share mp3's online.  I resisted this as well, not getting an mp3 player until my mom bought me an iPod Shuffle for Christmas in 2004.  My first thought was something like "what am i going to do with this?"  I think it only held 512MB.  (I don't recall, and it eventually got stolen!)  But that was enough to hold about 150 songs, so I made an iTunes account, ripped my collection, let my friends go at it with my limewire (or whatever program I used at the time) and got my iTunes collection going.  Checked 150 songs plugged in my shuffle and had a different playlist everytime I left the house.  Well, I have always resisted the change of formats in music growing up, but at this point, I may have cut back in my purchases of CD's to only bands that I really liked.  So if I was cutting back, you know the nation was, and therefore our CD retail stores are really hurting now. 
Walking through the mall today, I think there may be only 1 or 2 cd stores in MOA now.  Ouch, things have changed.  The days of buying a hard copy of a CD and going through the liner notes are dying out.  It is kind of sad.