Pete Townshend's John Peel lecture made him sound like a dinosaur wishing for the good ol' days. He said people who share music for free in the belief that cash will eventually filter down to artists are "in a kind of denial" – and he's right about that – but his attack on iTunes is misguided and directed at the wrong culprit.

Townshend wants iTunes to employ A&R executives to provide emerging artists with financial and creative support, and help them with marketing, copyright and distribution. Someone needs to inform him that iTunes is a digital music store. It's like asking HMV or Sainsbury's to do the work of a record company. What would have happened to the Who, I wonder, if HMV had been in charge of their career?

iTunes already supports emerging artists, by giving them the opportunity to sell their music. For the past 50 years, one of the biggest challenges for new artists has been getting their records into shops. With limited floor space, managers tend to stock well-marketed artists, thereby safeguarding sales. The most prominent window displays go to major artists. In contrast, iTunes has unlimited space, and doesn't discriminate between commercial and independent acts.

Townshend asks: "Is there really any good reason why – just because iTunes exists in the wild-west internet land of Facebook and Twitter – it can't provide some aspect of these services to the artists whose work it bleeds like a digital vampire Northern Rock for its enormous commission?"

But iTunes charges a 30% commission, no more than the shops themselves – less, in many cases – and there's no deduction for breakages and unsold merchandise. iTunes is not a huge money-maker for Apple, unless you count the income from musical hardware, such as the iPod and iTouch.

The real digital vampires, as far as musicians are concerned, aren't iTunes, Facebook and Twitter – they're companies such as Grooveshark and Google (which owns YouTube), which put the onus on artists and labels to file DMCA take-down notices every time someone posts an unauthorised and unlicensed track on their site. Why not Spotify, We7 and Deezer, you ask? It's true that these sites pay little to musicians, but at least artists have the choice not to let them "suck the blood out of us", as the sites only feature music they've acquired a licence for.

Coldplay, Adele and Tom Waits have chosen not to let subscription services (apart from YouTube) stream their latest albums. Yet you can find all three albums on Grooveshark. Not because Grooveshark pays better – quite the contrary – but because it's next to impossible to get the site to permanently remove tracks. Just ask King Crimson's Robert Fripp and the Eagles. Cleverly, Coldplay has been renamed Chris Martin & Friends on the site, so as not to show up if their label searches for Coldplay. The site features a version of Adele's Rolling in the Deep that has been (illegally) ripped from YouTube – even helpfully detailing which software was used in the process – and placed in the category "converted videos" (with ads for O2 Brixton Academy and Parlotones tickets next to it). While there is a certain irony in Grooveshark ripping off a site which features loads of unlicensed music, few artists are laughing.

One music industry source I spoke to said that, forced to choose between doing something about YouTube and Grooveshark or doing something about piracy, they'd choose to tackle the former. Why? "Because most music fans are decent and don't want artists to be ripped off," he explained. "And while it's obvious that sites like Pirate Bay don't compensate artists, many people believe YouTube pays artists fairly, when they don't. YouTube royalties make even Spotify payments look good. How do you explain to an artist who's got tens of millions of hits on YouTube that he has to keep living at home with his mom?"