There have been enough reports stating that illegal downloads are in fact helping the music industry. Sean Silverthorne’s interview with Felix Oberholzer-Gee (awesome last name) in 2004 stated that “researchers believe that most downloading is done over peer-to-peer networks by teens and college kids, groups that are “money-poor but time-rich,” meaning they wouldn’t have bought the songs they downloaded. In that sense, the music industry can’t claim those downloads as lost record sales.” So please, allow me to help boost music sales. Afterall, I’m only doing my part.
Step One Get yourself a free download of µTorrent. From all the downloaders I’ve used, this one is far and above my fave.
Step Two Run a search in µTorrent for whatever artist/movie/software/etc. you would like to download.
Step Three Rifle through the results and figure out which link houses your download of choice. Generally, ThePirateBay is going to have what you are looking for. Be forewarned that they have been sued recently and their site has been plagued with cookies and trojans. TorrentReactor is pretty great too.
Step Four When this screen pops up (ex: ThePirateBay), click the download link.

Step Five When you are prompted to open the new file, confirm that you want it to open with µTorrent.
Step Six When you see this screen and these words, you’ve reached optimum illegal downloading.

Step Seven OMG You’re almost there!

Step Eight This is the money shot right here kids!

Step Nine It is important to not seed your downloads online again, back where they came from. This is where people get in trouble. So click the little red X. Confirm that you want to remove it from your queue.

Step Ten Locate where your downloaded files have ended up on your computer. After doing that, you can upload them into whatever mp3 player you have.
CONGRATS! Or should I say ARRRGH! You are officially a pirate!
The number of illegal music downloads continued to increase—but so did music sales. -Sean Silverthorne