The illegal downloading of copyrighted songs in the UK has reached record levels in 2010, on track to hit 1.2 billion before the year is over. This bit of data comes courtesy of a new report released by UK recording industry group BPI, which says that the music industry is growing slower than it should thanks to the lack of action against downloaders.

The study, which was conducted on behalf of BPI by Harris Interactive and UKOM/Nielsen, claims that three-quarters of all music downloaded in the UK is pirated. This is despite 67 legal music services available to UK citizens, which BPI says have helped expand the music market during the course of the year. The sale of digital singles is expected to hit 160 million by the end of 2010, up from 149.7 million in 2009. The same goes for albums, which are expected to increase from 16.1 million in 2009 to 21 million in 2010.

Still, "[T]his growth is a fraction of what it ought to be," BPI CEO Geoff Taylor said in a statement. "Illegal downloading continues to rise in the UK. It is a parasite that threatens to deprive a generation of talented young people of their chance to make a career in music, and is holding back investment in the fledgling digital entertainment sector."

The music sharing medium of choice seems to be changing, though. According to the report, P2P use in the UK has remained steady at 23 percent of all music consumers (or 4 out of 5 illegal music downloaders). UK teens in particular seem to be cutting back on their P2P use, so this trend in overall P2P users comes as no surprise.

The use of non-P2P sharing methods is "rising alarmingly," however, with the use of "cyberlockers" increasing by 15 percent, illegal MP3 pay sites increasing by 36 percent, and illegal MP3 search engines increasing by 28 percent. And, BPI points out that there are still more people regularly using illegal methods to download music than the total number of people who are using some of the largest streaming music services, such as Spotify or Last.fm.

On top of that, BPI warns that many illegal downloaders seem to believe that their actions are legal—44 percent—with the numbers increasing even more for those who use illegal pay sites.

This isn't to say that people aren't slowly converting to legal sources. Thirteen percent of survey respondents said they had recently stopped using P2P in favor of other options, such as free streaming services (23 percent) or social networks (21 percent). Another 29 percent said their reason for stopping was to be fair to artists and songwriters—it's clear where people's priorities are, since only 12 percent said they stopped using P2P because they were afraid of getting caught.

Given this discovery, it certainly seems as if the music industry could benefit from emphasizing the value of musicians and artists instead of focusing on fear of law enforcement, but that's not BPI's angle. The group says that the industry's growth is being hurt because of the lack of consequences for those illegally downloading music files. Of course, the continued tanking of CD sales is helping to put a dent in growth as well; the organization said that despite increased income from online music sales, it still wasn't enough to offset losses from CDs.