People have been downloading music illegally for several years now and while many people have been fined and some even jailed for the activity, millions still continue to illegally download music instead of buying it.

This year, Bruno Mars was the most illegally download artists. Over 64.5 million tracks of music were downloaded illegally this year. Of those downloads, 70% of them were full albums and the other 30% were single songs. 5,783,556 of the downloads were songs by Bruno Mars.

Being named the Most Illegally Downloaded artist of 2013 is not Bruno’s biggest accomplishment of the year. He was also named Billboard’s Artist Of The Year and stayed on the top 100 charts for months.

File sharing methods such as BitTorrent have made it easier than ever for people to download music illegally. Users can share music files with other users and search for songs by almost any artist in any music genre. According to Billboard, file sharing is decreasing and Bit Torrent’s downloads fell over 7% since 2011.

The drop in illegal music downloads is likely a result of the rise in streaming music. Many people now use streaming music apps and websites to listen to their favorite songs instead of downloading them to their computers or devices.

Among the illegal Bruno Mars songs that were downloaded this year, the most popular were Unorthodox Jukebox, When I Was Your Man, Treasure and Locked Out Of Heaven. These songs were also the most popular on the Billboard charts.

Do you think it is okay to download music illegally?

Image via Wikimedia Commons.