MUMBAI: India has emerged as the eight biggest torrent downloading country with the total torrent download between January-June 2012 reaching 8.9 million including approximately 71 million songs.
Topping the list is US followed by UK, Italy, Canada, Brazil, Australia and Spain in the seventh place. France and Philippines round off the top ten countries.
The data comes from global Digital Music Index (DMI) conducted by Musicmetric. The study is claimed to be the most in-depth ever of its kind on the global digital music landscape.
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According to the report, out of the 405 million music torrent downloaded globally during the period, 78 per cent were albums, and the remaining 22 per cent singles. Taking an average of 10 tracks per album, the US alone accounted for more than 775 million songs downloaded, and 347million in the UK.
It is no secret, however that music fans are engaging with digital music in a wide variety of ways both authorized and unauthorized. They are streaming and downloading licensed artist content on licensed sites such as Spotify, Deezer, 7Digital and iTunes. They are engaging directly with artists on social networks such as facebook and Twitter. They are also sharing non- licensed content files on the BitTorrent network, in vast amounts all over the world, Musicmetric report said.
A total of three billion songs were bit torrented from January to June 2012. Digital music revenues of record companies grew by eight per cent globally in 2011 to an estimated US $5.2 billion. This compares to growth of five per cent in 2010 and represents the first time the year-on-year (YoY) growth rate has increased since IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) started measuring digital revenues in 2004.
“For the first time, we have evidence that blocking Pirate Bay had little effect on BitTorrent downloading. It is also clear however, that availability of streaming services like Spotify does reduce this activity as people have greater access to music they want via legitimate means. The challenge for copyright holders is to find ways to monetize music files torrented online. The potential for converting revenue lost through file trading is not entirely a fairy tale, however it will differ with different genres and life stages of artist,” Musicmetric CEO Gregory Mead said.
Musicmetric currently tracks 750,000 artists in the following segments: top 10, then next 100, next 1000, next 10,000, and by genre. Where possible, these findings have been broken down into country and regional trends.
Rihanna tops the downloaded artist list with her ‘Talk Talk Talk’ album being downloaded more than 1.2 million times, followed by Billy Van’s EP ‘The Cardigan’ at more than one million, and Adele’s ‘21′ with more than 990,000 downloads.
“It’s short-sighted to think that we can simply tell people to stop and they will. Consumers have used the BitTorrent protocol for over decade because it’s the best way to move large files. That’s true for musicians too. The challenge is building the right business models on top of the technology, which is something we’re very committed to here,” BitTorrent ED Matt Mason said.
