The numbers speak for themselves and they don’t lie. Although yes, it should be taken into account that the study only took into account Bit Torrent activity, so direct downloads should still be counted, and via other P2P programs. However, knowing that BitTorrent is the most used P2P system, this study allows us to have a fairly realistic idea of the world situation at the moment.
Spain, despite being repeatedly criticized for its people’s penchant for piracy, is left out of the top five countries that download the most illegal music in the world. The list of these nations is headed, as we have already said, by the United States, which by far dominates a Top 5 where we see, in order, a United Kingdom (43.2 million downloads), Italy (33.1 million), Canada (23.9 million) and Brazil (19.7 million). We are in seventh position, behind Australia (19.2 million), and we have a figure of 10.3 million downloads in the first six months of 2012. The Top 10 is closed by India (8, 9 million), our neighboring country France (8.3 million). ) and the Philippines (8.3 million).
Relative figures
However, these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, as what really matters is not the number of songs downloaded illegally, but the number of songs downloaded based on the country’s population. If we redo the list taking into account that the values are relative, and dividing the number of songs downloaded by the millions of people in the country, the list is ordered in a different way, Australia being the country where they upload most often, followed by Canada, UK, Italy, US, Spain, France, Brazil, Philippines and India, which makes sense being given that the population of this country is incredibly high.
What does the industry think?
Most record labels and production companies they made it very clear, piracy is a major problem that we must try to eradicate. However, the authors do not have the same opinion, and that is that they see how the amount of money that intermediaries keep increases.
The BBC study, although global, is focused on the United Kingdom and analyzes, even by city, the state of piracy in the country. Ed Sheeran is the most affected author, and it is that in the UK more than 55,000 illegal downloads per month of any song you associate with that artist. Even so, he is not very upset, he says he has sold 1.2 million units of his album, while eight million copies of the album have been downloaded. But he indicates that he sells “albums and tickets” for concerts. And he ends by saying that “tickets for my concerts cost 18 euros, and my records cost eight, so everything is relative”. Undoubtedly, for him it’s a bit different, he sees how illegal downloads help him gain notoriety, which later makes him profitable at gigs.