Many people lay the blame for music industry woes on the Internet. They hold that MP3 has eroded sales, spurring a decline from the 1990s when singers like A-mei and Jacky Cheung would sell over a million copies of their records, to the current day when top artists like Jay Chou can at best sell 300,000, and in 2005 S.H.E, Stefanie Sun, and Jolin Tsai had trouble breaking the 100,000 mark.
許多人把近年來唱片業不景氣的原因歸咎於網路非法下載，認為 mp3 侵蝕了業者的唱片銷售量，使得 1990 年代張惠妹、張學友那種動輒上百萬張的唱片銷售量，萎縮到 2005 年頂級藝人周杰倫最多只有 30 萬張，S.H.E、孫燕姿、蔡依林則略高於 10 萬張，一般藝人的市場則在 8 千到 2 萬張左右。