A Glimpse At Piracy In The UK And Beyond

[Envoirment]

Interesting article published by the BBC you can view here.

Countries with the most tracks downloaded/shared illegally for the first half of 2012 (6 Months):

1. US - 96,681,133
2. UK - 43,263,582
3. Italy - 33,158,943
4. Canada - 23,959,924
5. Brazil - 19,724,522
6. Australia -19,104,047
7. Spain - 10,306,829
8. India - 8,965,271
9. France - 8,400,869
10. Philipines - 8,351,260
11. Mexico - 7,522,865
12. Netherlands - 6,671,428
13. Portugal - 5,597,198
14. Poland - 5,059,204
15. Greece - 4,919,567
16. Hungary - 4,470,948
17. Chile - 4,210,641
18. Romania - 4,152,252
19. Sweden - 4,074,594
20. Belgium - 3,880,900

Source

Most pirated album release for the first half of 2012 worldwide was:

Rihanna's "Talk That Talk" - 1,228,313 downloads tracked.

Quite shocking really. And those are the tracked downloads. Real figures are likely to be even higher!

[Peaches. [Ch, r. is]]

Thx for posting this. Does it say how they got their data?

[Deleted]

How many tracks have been legally purchased for the first half of 2012?

Those numbers are huge.

[newpower]

No Russia / China in the top 20?

[dbhmr]

I hope they find a way to end piracy; it's so ridiculous.

[hitseeker.]

Wow at Portugal Not that I'm too surprised though lol

[p0isonparadise.]

Germany nor Japan made the top 20? :o Those two are pretty huge markets, labels should promote there more often.

[Deleted]

Sept 17, 2012 9:39:15 GMT -5 Peaches. [Ch, r. is] said:

Thx for posting this. Does it say how they got their data?

Yeah, they used software that tracks torrent downloads. So this doesn't even include downloads from file sharing websites.

Sept 17, 2012 10:22:01 GMT -5 dbhmr said:

I hope they find a way to end piracy; it's so ridiculous.

In the last year alone, it's gotten MUCH more difficult to find MP3s. People are continuing to use torrent sites, but those are risky (as this study alone proves, it's quite easy to track who is downloading and what is being downloaded). I don't think we're going to see a complete end to music piracy online unless the government (and I'm just talking about the US) decides to start closely monitoring what every single person is doing online. It's amazing how many people are perfectly content ripping a 96-128kbps MP3 from a YouTube video and putting it on their iPod.

[Envoirment]

Sept 17, 2012 10:15:00 GMT -5 newpower said:

No Russia / China in the top 20?

Not surprising. Despite their large populations, many live in poverty. And the ones that don't have heavy restrictions on the internet, so may find it a lot harder and not worth it.

Sept 17, 2012 10:22:01 GMT -5 dbhmr said:

I hope they find a way to end piracy; it's so ridiculous.

The interesting thing is that two of the largest music markets, Germany and Japan, aren't in the top 20. So perhaps record labels should see what those markets are doing to combat piracy.

[Cerbius]

Sept 17, 2012 10:15:00 GMT -5 newpower said:

No Russia / China in the top 20?

The figures above are only for BitTorrent downloads. I'm guessing the majority of the population in those countries use direct downloads or something. Russia and China should definitely be in the top 10 overall.

[Deleted]

Isn't the Internet very heavily monitored in China?

[Deleted]

16. Hungary - 4,470,948

Yay, we charted somewhere. Crazy, considering gold here is like 2,000 sales.

Sept 17, 2012 10:22:01 GMT -5 dbhmr said:

I hope they find a way to end piracy; it's so ridiculous.

They need to learn to get their money from video advertisements and tour sales. People pirating are never going to go back to paying 15$/album no matter what the industry tries to do.

[Mark]

Sept 17, 2012 10:32:26 GMT -5 @jazzysoul47 said:

In the last year alone, it's gotten MUCH more difficult to find MP3s.

I agree with this. I admit, I am guilty of illegal downloading. But recently I have begun to legally purchase MUCH more of my music on iTunes. Partly because I just got a new MacBook and don't want the viruses/Malware that comes with Torrent sites (I know they say Macs can't get viruses but I don't know if I buy that), but another reason is because it has become much harder to find good quality mp3 files without having to search forever. I'm much happier now paying $1.29 for a good quality song that will download in 15 seconds and not infect my computer.

[Lozzy]

Shocked that Russia isn't on there.

Sept 17, 2012 10:32:26 GMT -5 @jazzysoul47 said:

In the last year alone, it's gotten MUCH more difficult to find MP3s.

Sept 17, 2012 10:43:31 GMT -5 Mark said:

... it has become much harder to find good quality mp3 files without having to search forever.

I feel like it keeps getting easier.

[Cerbius]

Sept 17, 2012 10:40:43 GMT -5 @jazzysoul47 said:

Isn't the Internet very heavily monitored in China?

It maybe be heavily monitored in terms of limiting free speech but pretty much everyone pirates there. China has 500 million+ internet users with pretty much no legitimate method to purchase music online.

[Deleted]

Sept 17, 2012 10:43:31 GMT -5 Mark said:

Sept 17, 2012 10:32:26 GMT -5 @jazzysoul47 said:

In the last year alone, it's gotten MUCH more difficult to find MP3s.

it has become much harder to find good quality mp3 files without having to search forever.

Sure, if you're using Google. P2P is getting easier as more people use them, and search bars on pirating sites are giving more results.

[Deleted]

It doesn't help that AllAccess of all places had their mp3s set-up that anyone [even people not logged in] could download the songs for free until I e-mailed them about it. Even then, it's still possible for anyone to illegally download from AllAccess, although it isn't as intuitive. [Although it makes it harder for me to explain to them the issue and get them to actually fix it.]

If they can't even get it right there, I don't have much hope for the music industry being competent enough to end piracy.

[Deleted]

Sept 17, 2012 10:59:02 GMT -5 Codex said:

Sept 17, 2012 10:43:31 GMT -5 Mark said:

it has become much harder to find good quality mp3 files without having to search forever.

Sure, if you're using Google. P2P is getting easier as more people use them, and search bars on pirating sites are giving more results.

It's much easier to get caught on P2P than Googling and using file-sharing sites (they generally just shut down the file-sharing sites without keeping track of individual users who may be downloading, since file sharing websites only work in one direction [the user isn't necessarily then sharing the download with more people]), and some people don't want to take that risk of having their IP recorded every time they download copyrighted material.

Sept 17, 2012 11:31:39 GMT -5 @xiivi said:

It doesn't help that AllAccess of all places had their mp3s set-up that anyone [even people not logged in] could download the songs for free until I e-mailed them about it. Even then, it's still possible for anyone to illegally download from AllAccess, although it isn't as intuitive. [Although it makes it harder for me to explain to them the issue and get them to actually fix it.]

If they can't even get it right there, I don't have much hope for the music industry being competent enough to end piracy.

Were they HQ? I feel like when I've downloaded from there before the quality was a bit subpar.

[Deleted]

So this is why the Canada album market has gone to shit. Doesn't surprise me though. iTunes isn't as highly publicized here I feel. Majority of the people I know download illegally and don't even have an iTunes account. I'll admit I download illegally sometimes but mostly stick to the better quality iTunes recordings.

[Lozzy]

Sept 17, 2012 13:18:54 GMT -5 @jazzysoul47 said:

Were they HQ? I feel like when I've downloaded from there before the quality was a bit subpar.

I think they were 128 kbps or so. I consider that subpar, but it's probably HQ enough for most listeners.

[Deleted]

Those numbers are actually lower than I assumed they'd be. Even once I realised they were P2P, this:

Sept 17, 2012 5:36:40 GMT -5 Envoirment said:

Most pirated album release for the first half of 2012 worldwide was:

Rihanna's "Talk That Talk" - 1,228,313 downloads tracked.

still seems so low. I tend to just assume that if every illegal download was a legal purchase the music industry would be back to the exact levels it was at before online piracy took off. Only 1.2M extra sales in the US, let alone worldwide, for Talk That Talk doesn't seem even close to being enough to bring it to the level of equivalent pre-piracy levels.

That's not meant to be Rihanna shade and clearly isn't the way everybody else is looking at it, but it was my first thought.

[Envoirment]

Sept 17, 2012 13:30:23 GMT -5 @backintime said:

Those numbers are actually lower than I assumed they'd be. Even once I realised they were P2P, this:

Sept 17, 2012 5:36:40 GMT -5 Envoirment said:

Most pirated album release for the first half of 2012 worldwide was:

Rihanna's "Talk That Talk" - 1,228,313 downloads tracked.

still seems so low. I tend to just assume that if every illegal download was a legal purchase the music industry would be back to the exact levels it was at before online piracy took off. Only 1.2M extra sales in the US, let alone worldwide, for Talk That Talk doesn't seem even close to being enough to bring it to the level of equivalent pre-piracy levels.

That's not meant to be Rihanna shade and clearly isn't the way everybody else is looking at it, but it was my first thought.

The research only looks at one type of piracy. What you also have to remember is that multiple albums are likely to be pirated for 500k+ copies. Also, the research was only done for half of the year and it's been a relatively quiet period. The rest of the year is jam-packed full of new releases, so will likely see higher levels of piracy.

[Deleted]

Not to mention that's only Talk That Talk's piracy for the first half of 2012. The few months at the end of 2011 were most likely much higher.

[Deleted]

Even taking that all into account, it still seems low. I mean, that was the most P2Ped album in the world for that period and it was only downloaded 1.2M times?

[dbhmr]

Sept 17, 2012 13:30:23 GMT -5 @backintime said:

Those numbers are actually lower than I assumed they'd be. Even once I realised they were P2P, this:

Sept 17, 2012 5:36:40 GMT -5 Envoirment said:

Most pirated album release for the first half of 2012 worldwide was:

Rihanna's "Talk That Talk" - 1,228,313 downloads tracked.

still seems so low. I tend to just assume that if every illegal download was a legal purchase the music industry would be back to the exact levels it was at before online piracy took off. Only 1.2M extra sales in the US, let alone worldwide, for Talk That Talk doesn't seem even close to being enough to bring it to the level of equivalent pre-piracy levels.

That's not meant to be Rihanna shade and clearly isn't the way everybody else is looking at it, but it was my first thought.

I thought that, too. I wonder if online streaming and the ability to so easily share music with friends (even if it was originally squired legally) make up the gap in piracy numbers and year 2000 record sales.

[grandelf]

I'd say that number for Talk That Talk downloads is relatively low because the average listener probably does not bother with albums anymore. Hit singles are most likely pirated in way higher numbers.

[Peaches. [Ch, r. is]]

Plus we have streaming software that's become more popular recently and streams entire album for free now, not even pirating is needed anymore.

I'm curious to see how this looked 1-2 years ago.

[Deleted]

^This

Talk that Talk being the most downloaded says a lot about why Rihanna sales are low. I'm curious, is there any way to check 21s P2P downloads, and compare them to things like Born This Way or Loud?

[jasontoralba]

Philippines should be higher... :)

[🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾]

Sept 17, 2012 15:42:50 GMT -5 Peaches. [Ch, r. is] said:

Plus we have streaming software that's become more popular recently and streams entire album for free now, not even pirating is needed anymore.

I'm curious to see how this looked 1-2 years ago.

The amount of money that labels/artists get from many of the streaming services is really, really minimal. It would take millions and millions of plays for it to be meaningful.