That type I think blurs the line on what actually is piracy versus the guy handing out demo tapes on the corner. It’s a sort of a ‘I absolutely don’t want you to go download my stuff, particularly from this link or this link…’
During the height of the RIAA’s rampage and shortly after some groups started actively promoting the model of give away the music, buy the special package. NIN Ghosts comes to mind as one that from what I gather did pretty well.
The face of music piracy seems to have changed a lot though. It used to be that buying albums was expensive, particularly when it was one good song and a bunch of crap. The $1/song thing was clunky, disorganized, and the early efforts with DRM sucked. Now things like Spotify exist and let someone play as much as they like for the price of roughly an album a month and have taken a big lead in making stuff that never would have been on the old radio known.
Music piracy now seems to have shifted to filll in the role that the weird little record shop in the corner of the mall used to play. Finding and keeping those imports, bootlegs, live tapes, etc that you’ll never find on a standard service. Or when places like Spotify yank something that I liked because of some licence BS and say it’s not available well…