I am not condoning the practice myself either @ghdprentice , but if the person who made the copy for himself had no intention of ever purchasing the music, how does this become a loss to the artist?
It's much the same as the statistics that used to be published for the millions software companies lose due to piracy. In my opinion, it is not an accurate consideration because it makes the assumption for example, all the people using Adobe products would have purchased them if they did not have pirated products.