Illegally downloading music hurts any artist. Fact.

There is absolutely no doubt about it. I do however like Spunkwhos comment:

I think you COULD be right about this, but the major disadvantage is that the majority of the time, a person will just keep the song on their cpmputer and play it through winamp/wmp or burn it to their own blank disc. If people 'become a fan' of a certain artist through downloading music, then that is only going to spur them on to download other music by the same artist. If they like another album, they will more than likely keep on downloading their full back catalogue, therefore hurting the artist even more.

Up until a couple of years ago, if you heard about a artist, you went out and bought the album. That doesnt happen much these days. I know, personally, if I hear about a album that everyone seems to be liking at the moment, then I will download it to see what its like and to see what all the fuss is about. I am pretty confident that this is the case for a lot of other people too.

We are definately killing the music industry, and it is only before time that we will not have single and album charts based solely through sales. From what I can see, all we will eventually have is download charts and music chains will eventually go out of business. This based on the number of people who are not only getting the internet installed on their home computers, but also higher speed connections, making it so much easier and faster to download material, be it either officially (eg. Itunes) or illegally (eg. Bit Torrent).