There are several reasons why I regularly download tracks; 1. Because they're not in the shops yet. The Coral's new single has been on heavy rotation on MTV2 now for nearly a month now but It's not going to be commercially available for another fortnight yet. The only way I can get it now is to download it illegally. 2. Because they're no longer commercially available. This is especially relevant to old dance or soul tunes which were pressed up in limited quantities and the original copies are now trading hands for stupid amounts of money. In many cases I can't afford the inflated price so I have to download it illegally. I'm not going to fork out €100 for a second hand copy of the Quantic Soul Orchestra mix of Sunshine Anderson when I can download it for free. 3. Because they were never commercially available. Many unofficial remixes, bootlegs, rarities and live versions of tracks are only available online. If I only purchased my music in shops I wouldn't have copies of Elliott Smith singing Waterloo Sunset or Jeff Buckley covering Strange Fruit. 4. To hear what the song sounds like. Many of the records which I read about aren't available in my local HMV and have to be ordered in specially. I'm not going to order in an album if I don't know what it sounds like. In many cases a crappy 30 second real player clip isn't much of an indication of what the complete tune will sound like. Many dance tunes may sound great for 30 seconds but get fairly repetitive after seven minutes or so. The only way to be sure is to download the song and listen to it from start to finish before ordering it. Until the music industry try and sort out these points I think they've got some nerve for prosecuting individuals who are sharing their own record collections with other people.