We try to buy at US and Japan online stores which usually have better prices, specially now that USD and Yen aren't very strong against euro.
I care about music and I like thinking that the money I spend in a CD helps the artist to keep his/her work, but I hate the idea of feeding the big music companies that much. I avoid buying discs at 16-20 euros (average price of new releases in most department stores, which have been shrinking their music sections more and more in the last three years) if I haven't heard them before and I know for sure they're worth every penny.
I think people are downloading most of their music for free. In Spain any HDD, memory card, CD-R, DVD-R, DAP... whatever physical media to hold data -hence music-, and the devices to burn it, pays a fee -they call it "canon"- to the Spanish equivalent of RIAA, named SGAE. They take as fact you'll be using it to hold pirate films and music Here it's not a punishable guilt the fact of downloading music using P2P, or making your copies, unless you're making a profit from it. But as far as they blame it for the music sales drop, they charge everybody with that damn fee to support the SGAE and the bastards ruling it. Funnily enough the proceedings from that fee are shared among the artists considering their sales, so probably the ones being more downloaded, who should get more compensation, aren't being more paid...
IMHO the sales drop is related to free downloads for a big part, but also for people caring less and less for music as in albums, and being more prone to get individual songs that they like. It's amazing that ringtones are selling a lot.