Music piracy up 16% worldwide

Music piracy on a global level grew by 16.5% in the second half of 2015.

The figure was included in a study commissioned by anti-piracy and market analytics solutions companyMUSO, which was set up to help labels and rightsholders monitor copyright infringement.

The study, 2015 Global Music Piracy Insights, analysed the website traffic of 576 sites which are either dedicated to music piracy, or contain significant music content.

According to MBW, which was exclusively provided the study, the sites had over 2 billion visitor traffic hits worldwide.

The US was the #1 user of piracy torrent sites covering all media types, but came in at #3 for the territory with the most illegal music downloads. In terms of music downloads specifically, the only other statistics revealed by MBW is that Germany was the 4^th top territory for visitor traffic using piracy torrent sites and the UK came in at 13^th.

Australia is on the world map as a notable culprit for copyright infringement – we were the territory with the top download rate of Game Of Thrones last year, taking the title from larger populations like the US and UK.In October 2015 piracy sites like The Pirate Bay and Torrentz.Eu received 5.2 million visits from Australian audiences.

In October 2015MUSO analysed Australia’s piracy market and found in that month we visitedthe most popular 18 piracy domains more than 16 million times.

Australia does of course have a blocking strategy at play to combat piracy. The Australian Federal Government passed theCopyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015 last June to allow film and TV companies to take legal action against ISPs to force them to block infringing websites.

Before that, a ‘three strikes’scheme similar to what the Rudd and Gillard governments tried to implement (and similar to the strategy in the UK) was included in the Communications Alliance’s final version of its proposed policy. It was agreed to by Australian ISPs and copyright holders, but survey results released by the Government last July found only 21% of Australians who admitted to downloading copyrighted material said they would be encouraged to stop if they received a letter saying their account would be suspended. Of the 2,630 Australians surveyed (representing 26% of total Australian Internet users), 43% also said they had consumed at least some illegal files.

It could be said that at the heart of the issue is the fact content owners aren’t adhering to demand. It’s already been proven in Norway and Sweden that better and more accessible streaming options help fight against piracy. A survey in December 2014 showed that just 4% of Norwegians under 30 still used illegal platforms to download music. Sweden’s anti-piracy law, titled IPRED, resulted in increased music sales by 36% during the first six months of the law’s implementation.

MUSO was first set up in 2009 as an aggregator of online popularity, pulling together stats to identify trends. Now it has partnerships with and monitors websites including SoundCloud, eBay, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and even Russian social network vKontakte.