In a few cases, it is the artist's choice. Some artist's allow their stuff to be torrented, as I mentioned above. And you see, I don't need to go through 20,000,000 tracks to find what I want, and I don't need to subscribe to a service.

For example... I can hear about a CD through a friend, torrent that CD or a song from it, listen to it, then purchase the CD myself, for a one time fee. In the short run, it may be more expensive, but in the long run, it saves me time, and money.

So in the end, I listen, I like, I buy. And sure, you could argue that YouTube is another way to listen to a song, but there are some cases where I'd like the song to listen to on the go. As I don't own a smart phone, I have to download it and put the song onto my phone to listen to it wherever I may be.

There are some people who pirate things for their own personal gain, but that's just a few people. I like to think that this community isn't exactly malicious, but some people take advantage of that. But as we all know, there are people like that everywhere, and in every situation.