Apple and their iTunes, Amazon and their Kindle, virtual books, virtual music, virtual movies, Adobe and their greed-machine, all of that sort of stuff needs to be avoided.  Tangible is the answer to all of this, it has been proven time and time again that people are more prtapared to pay for tangible goods than virtual ones (for the resons pointed out above).  The bottom line is, people need to stop whining about the way things are if they're the sort of person that is prepared to buy virtual books, virtual music, and virtual movies - you deserve everything you get - because you form part of the problem by supporting such mechanisms.

If you want to support artists, support them as directly as possible, buy physical, and keep the greed-machines out of the picture, simple as that.
You have to give the PAYING customer something that the piratees can't get in the pirated version, and that means the product must be tangible.

So, how do you listen to your vinyl on the bus? While you're out for a walk? Driving in a car? Lying around the pool soaking up the sun? Because unless you convert that vinyl into a format that allows portability, then you've hobbled yourself to only listen to your music where there happens to be a turntable sitting around. You've completely got cause and effect backwards here. The people who published movies and books and movies and whatever fought like hell to prevent people from putting it on any format other than what they provided. It wasn't Apple that created portable digital music (the iPod was certainly not the first MP3 player, it just became the most successful). It wasn't Amazon that created the e-book..in fact, Amazon and the Kindle came late into the game. It was consumer demand that created those markets and dragged the assorted entertainment industries kicking and screaming and fighting (with some exceptions, like Baen Books) the entire way.