Muso is an online anti-piracy company. I mentioned them previously on this blog in late August. Muso provides a service which allows content creators and right holders to scan various websites around the internet for illegal copies. Once the copies are found, Muso also provides an easy way for the user to send a takedown notice to the website.
Earlier this Week, Muso provided Musicweek with, what Musicweek is dubbing, a list of the top ten most pirated artists of all time. To play devil’s advocate, this claim by Musicweek may be slightly misleading. The list, which can be found in its entirety here, provides data in relation to how many illegal copies have been uploaded online as opposed to downloaded. I may be wrong here, but surely it is possible for a handful of illegal uploads to be downloaded millions of times while couple thousand uploads receive one or two downloads per copy.
Nevertheless, I do recognise that the data does provide a fairly accurate picture of which artists are high in demand amongst pirates. There really wouldn’t be a need for over 180,000 files containing copyrighted material owned by The Beatles to be uploaded if people were not downloading them. Furthermore, Muso already informed Musicweek that the files were downloaded an average of about 1,000 times per copy; although I’m not exactly clear if that is in relation to all of the artists on that list, or specific to just the Beatles.
Ignoring my deep rooted instinct to criticise (for which I solely blame/thank my law degree for), the results on the list are slightly surprising. Mostly because, none of these bands are what I would call “modern”. I’ll be completely honest I never even heard of Fleetwood Mac before I came across this list.
This is interesting especially considering the fact that the stereotypical online pirate is often portrayed as a fifteen year old teenager in his parent’s basement downloading anything his little self-righteous and entitled heart desires. This could mean one of two things: either pirates are really appreciative of musical culture; or more likely the average pirate is probably a bit older than is often portrayed.
Sources:
http://www.musicweek.com/news/read/the-beatles-named-most-pirated-artist-in-the-world/056664
http://www.craveonline.com/music/articles/600749-top-10-most-pirated-music-artists-revealed-the-beatles-are-number-one
