Let’s face it: a huge percentage of us still download music illegally. I won’t condone it or condemn it, only recognize the simple truth.

For those of us who do still do it, it’s beginning to get more difficult to do; there are more regulations, more people watching, and fewer and fewer locations for finding music.

If you’re looking to download music from the Web, here are seven ways to get it done:

Download From YouTube

There are a number of sites that extract the audio from YouTube videos, and make them downloadable. When you’re dealing with a music video, suddenly you’re going to be able to download a song straight from the YouTube video. The site I use to do this is Vixy, which lets you convert YouTube videos among a number of formats- including several different audio formats. Just paste in the YouTube link, pick your format, and you’re good to go.

Upload sites

One of the best ways to find music is to simply Google it. The best way to do that is to enter into Google one of these three things: MegaUpload, Rapidshare, or zShare. Pick one of those and follow it with what you want- like “MegaUpload U2″ to find a number of downloadable links you’re looking for. It’ll take some digging, but it’s the best way to make sure you find music files, and not just websites related to your band

Google Music Search

This is another great way to filter everything else, and make sure you’re only getting the music files you’re looking for. Google Music Search uses the Google API to whittle results down to music files- just search for the artist or song you want, and you’ll get tons of results. Narrow them down by file type, or even search Amazon and eBay for your favorite artists.

Forums

Forums are often the best place to search for music files. They’re private, which means they can’t easily be found and shut down, and they’re sources for massive databases of music. A Google search will find some great forums, a little asking around will likely find a lot more. My favorite? Yuku.

Blogs

Blogs are a fantastic resource for music news and downloads, and are actually the single largest source of the music I find online. There are a ton of options, but here are a few to start with: Music is The Heart Of Our Soul, Pretty Much Amazing, and Stereogum

Torrents

If you want to download, and don’t mind bringing something to your desktop, torrents are the new fan favorite. Torrents are large files, broken down into a ton of tiny pieces that are simultaneously downloaded to make the process faster for you. You’ll need a Torrent manager like BitLord or uTorrent to manage your torrents, and a place to find them. Again, there are many options, but my favorite is Usniff.

P2P

P2P, which stands for “Peer to Peer,” is the way I started to download music online. Using a client like Limewire, you connect to another user’s computer (or several others) and download the file directly from them. This isn’t quite the industry it once was (with KazAa, Napster and the like), but is still a viable and useful way to find and download music.

If you’re willing to be cross-platform, odds are good you can find and download just about any music file you can think of. With these tools, the world of music is truly at your fingertips- though the law may be at your door.

How do you download your music, legal or otherwise?