Jamie Cullum - Cullum Supports Illegal Downloading

British singer JAMIE CULLUM is convinced he will always download tracks illegally - even though the practice has cost him 60,000 sales of his latest album THE PURSUIT.

The jazz star admits using illicit file-sharing to get his hands on new releases as they leak online - and he's not ashamed of participating in the illegal practice.

He says, "I'm a music consumer of the highest order, and I spend an awful lot of my time looking for music, buying music, downloading music legally and illegally. I make no bones (have no qualms) about it - if there's some Thom Yorke EP floating around and it's not out until next week, then I'll download it illegally.

"However, the following week I'll buy it because I want the artwork, and I want to see the notes and to find out where it was recorded and all the rest."

But Cullum is sure that illegal downloading has had an effect on the sales figures of his new album, which was released in the U.K. in November (09).

He adds, "The flip side of that is, four weeks before The Pursuit came out, I was getting all these tweets (internet messages) from people who'd heard it because some of the CDs sent out to journalists had found their way online. I know the album has been illegally downloaded at least 60,000 times, which is as many as the record has actually sold.

"The problem is, we've gone too far. You can't start punishing people - you'd be punishing people like me, who spends thousands of pounds a year online, because I illegally downloaded something from a blog."