Manchester home to biggest music thieves in the UK – pirates have awful taste in music
PIRACY of music is still something of a contentious issue. Some say it is theft, some say it isn’t because it doesn’t remove the original, rather, makes a copy. Basically though, it is quite obviously stealing and if you can deal with that, then go buck wild.
And as the headline suggests, Manchester is the biggest pirate city in the UK, and the United Kingdom happens to be the second worst country in the world for illegal music downloads behind the United States. While this is all well and good, there’s some very, very disturbing news hidden away in the stats.
The artist most illegally downloaded is Ed Sheeran.
It is clear that peer-to-peerists have a dicky moral compass but more evidently, no ears. Seriously, Ed Sheeran is music so beige that the air his music passes through has been known to kill itself. Either way, would the artists be thrilled at being Most Listened To or feel that they are Most Stolen From?
The findings of Musicmetric’s study show that more than twice as many albums are downloaded illegally in the UK as are downloaded on legal music sites, with in advance of 33 million albums and 10 million singles hoiked for free from BitTorrent. In sterling, that’s around £500 million in lost revenue for the arseholes who work for the recording industry.
Andy Heath, director of British record company Beggars Group said: “Clearly the biggest problem with illegally downloaded music is that there is a generation who feel it is natural that music and all creative content is free”.
The league table of illegal downloaders and the most popular acts in their country are as follows:
1. United States, 96,868,398 total shares (Drake)
2. United Kingdom 43,314,568 total shares (Ed Sheeran)
3. Italy 33,226,258 total shares (Laura Pausini)
4. Canada 23,953,053 total shares (Kanye West)
5. Brazil 19,677,596 total shares (Billy Van)
While Laura Pausini and Billy Van may not be household names around the world, Drake, Yeezy and Sheeran aren’t exactly short of a bob-or-two are they? Is illegal downloading really harming music? Kanye’s diamond teeth suggest otherwise and artists down the chain weren’t ever going to make their retirement from music were they?
Discuss (25 Marks).
Posted: 17th, September 2012 | In: Celebrities Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
