Unsurprisingly, I disagree that copying music is theft; "intellectual property" is a nonsense concept.
When you pay for a CD, you are not paying for the song, you are paying for the medium on which it is written and the cost of delivery, retails space ground rent et al.
The artists is in the business of providing content to a publisher. They are not paid for their content directly, they are paid royalties for being in part responsible for a physical product that can be sold. If they were being paid for the actual music creation, they'd be on an hourly wage like anyone else.
The reason that copyright is restricted is to prevent a publisher selling their products using someone's music without paying the royalty; but unless you are seeling the music download on, that does not apply to you. You as a consumer do not constitute an abusive publisher. Copyright is not intended to protect the artist from you, but from such publishers. Eventually any given work passes into the public domain and any citizen or publisher has the freedom to print copies withgout paying a royalty.