Report: Piracy Sites Attract 53 Billion Visits Yearly
A report from security firm MarkMonitor states that 43 sites identified for piracy attract 146 million visits daily for a total of 53.29 billion a year. 67% of those 43 sites are hosted in North America or Western Europe and according to the study the 3 largest – RapidShare, MegaVideo and MegaUpload – collectively get 21 billion visits each year.
To be sure, some of the named sites also host legal content and a only fraction of the unauthorized content is music, but these stats are sure to fuel those call for tougher crackdowns.
More: How Artists Can Profit From File Sharing (MusicThinkTank)
Readers: Do these stats surprise you or change your opinion of efforts to stop unauthorized downloading?
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Oh come on. I use Megaupload to transfer large files of scanned documents to and from WORK. Nothing to do with piracy at all. Another useless and thoroughly inaccurate statistic that the industry is going to try to beat its own customers over the head with.
I make a living off of songs, but there has got to be a line drawn somewhere. The best way to crackdown on illegal downloading/file sharing is too educate. Stealing anything is wrong, but yet it seems that starting with my generation media in any form is okay to steal. I mean heck “I wouldn’t buy it anyway”.
For artists, it comes down to: would you rather people listen to and enjoy your music, or would you rather live in paranoia and control-freakiness trying to make 99 cents from every single time your song is downloaded.
Come on, it’s time artists realize that “piracy” is the way forward. You can only ask people to pay for physical products. I only pay for CDs nowadays 🙂
I totally agree. I’m thinking of leaving the musicians union because of all the bs propaganda in their newsletters and magazine.
What about the songwriters? Who gives a flip about the artists, they have many other opportunities to earn money.
The music business is changing and I think the role of the pure “songwriter” will become obsolete. Songwriters will start becoming artists and I’m sure quite a lot of them will be very good. The only reason they weren’t artists in the “classical” music industry is because they weren’t marketable enough. There’s no need to be “magazine front-page friendly” anymore.
Pierre and Rick, next time you use your talents at whatever living you are involved in for free, please let us all know. We’ll be waiting for a long time on that. Because after all, why should YOU get payed you when you aren’t giving us a physical representation of your work?
I can see where you are coming from; however, I know some songwriters who pen some amazing hits and either do not want to be an artist or don’t have what it takes to make it as an artist. Its not the singer/songwriters that I’m not worried about. This industry needs to begin viewing the big picture, not the same wallet sized photo.