Musicmetric: Philippines 10th in Illegal BitTorrent Downloads

Posted on September 19th, 2012. Written by Rico.

According to a music monitoring firm that said it has started tracking digital music downloads, the Philippines is one of the top countries worldwide in terms of audio content pirated through the file-sharing protocol BitTorrent.

Musicmetric’s first Digital Music Index (DMI) is based on numerous measure points, including the popularity of artists and their songs on legal services like Pandora, Spotify, and iTunes. However the DMI also covers unauthorized distribution channels like illegal downloads through BitTorrent.

BitTorrent is a popular method of sharing files online. Instead of multiple users retrieving a file from a single source, BitTorrent users pass each other portions of the data. They share pieces they already have, while getting what they don’t, within a group of connected users associated with the file. By distributing pieces of a file among computers through the internet, BitTorrent allows for faster downloads.

Despite its heavy association with pirated movies and music, BitTorrent has many legitimate applications today. Blizzard-Activision, the makers of the online video games World of Warcraft and Diablo III, use the protocol to distribute software updates.

It was natural for BitTorrent to take off in the Philippines, where internet connectivity is slow and relatively expensive. The Musicmetric data says that for the first six months of 2012, the country had at least 8,380,208 illegal downloads through BitTorrent. The most pirated musician? Maroon 5. The full list:

Country	Illegal BitTorrent downloads, first 6 months of 2012	Most Pirated Artist
US	96,681,133	Drake
UK	43,263,582	Ed Sheeran
Italy	33,158,943	Laura Pausini
Canada	23,959,924	Kanye West
Brazil	19,724,522	Billy Van
Australia	19,232,252	Hilltop Hoods
Spain	10,303,633	Pablo Alboran
India	8,964,360	Billy Van
France	8,398,550	Sexion d’assaut
Philippines	8,380,208	Maroon 5

The number of illegal downloads is interesting, when you consider that by last count, there are only 29 million internet users in the Philippines. Does this mean we have the highest percentage of online pirates relative to our internet population?

Two common themes accompany this story as it makes the online rounds: First, while piracy is on the rise, record companies are making more money through licensed music downloads than ever. They made an estimated $5.2 billion in 2011, an eight-percent growth compared to the previous year. Second, some artists are ok if people pirated their albums—so long as they pay to watch the concerts. Yesterday’s Maroon 5 concert by the way was a hit, as these pictures from Facebook show:

(From Aika Robredo)

(From Rod-Angel Dira Vagilidad)

(From Katrina Rivera)

(From Lizette Velasco)