The UK's most pirated artist is… Drake, Ed Sheeran or Lady Gaga?
A new study into music piracy has revealed that super boring singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran is the UK’s most pirated artist. Come on guys, we thought you all had more refined musical taste!
The new research, published by Musicmetric, also revealed that Drake is the most pirated artist in the US. Overall the data shows that 40 million albums and singles were shared in the UK, while 96.6 million were shared in the US.
Globally good ol’ Rhi Rhi was the most downloaded artist overall, with her latest album Talk That Talk racking up 1.2 million illegal downloads.
Despite directly affecting his sales, Ed Sheeran proved optimistic about the figures when he was questioned about it in a BBC interview, stating that downloads are likely to inspire fans to come to his gigs (something that they can’t pirate) from which he earns more money anyway. Fair enough.
However, as you’d expect, it’s not a sentiment shared by industry executives. Geoff Taylor, Chief Executive of the BPI, said:
“A lot of people are getting very rich from stealing other people’s things.
“That’s wrong, and we think that musicians deserve to be paid for what they do, just like everyone else.”
You can view a breakdown of the tracks that have been downloaded the most in your area by putting your postcode into a new music widget provided by the BBC.
Let us know in the comments below who the most shared artists in your area is… Everyone around our office in central London apparently can’t get enough of Lady Gaga.
[Via Tech Digest]
One thought on “The UK's most pirated artist is… Drake, Ed Sheeran or Lady Gaga?”
Its a strange one piracy. Usually, people are condemed for it because we're told they don't want to pay for it and that if they enjoy or use what ever they pirate they should be paying for it.On the surface of things, we could be fooled into thinking the same thing with these most illegally downloaded artists, however, I'd be more inclined to think people may like the music they create but they don't think its actually worth paying for.Also, I'm pretty sure musicmetric is only monitoring P2P networks such as torrents. It could very well be that people who enjoy Sheeran, or Drake's music are simply more willing to openly pirate music then those who pirate say, Lady Gaga… Or maybe going back to the original thought, people actually like Lady Gaga enough to buy the music.Crappy music that is pushed onto us via the media giants via radio deals, viral/social marketing, adverts and in store displays really need to expect to be pirated by not brought. Unfortunatly there is far too much of that going on. Back in the day, everyone would share mix taps with friends of music they've found and loved. It was the way you 'heard' about music, you listened to it and if you enjoyed it you went and got the track or album from your local record shop who, by the way, were run and staffed by people who actually had a passion about music not some one who's only there for the wage packet.
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