A recent study by data analysis firm Musicmetric shows that Bruno Mars tops the charts for the most pirated artist of 2013!
Mars finished the year with nearly 5.8 million downloads to Rihanna’s 5.4 million. Daft Punk was a distant third with 4.2 million downloads. Justin Timberlake with 3.9 million downloads and Flo Rida with 3.5 million downloads round out the top five.
Musicmetric’s numbers represent albums and tracks downloaded using BitTorrent, a protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing that enables the transfer of large files. The company says a typical breakdown of BitTorrent traffic for musicians is 70% albums and 30% tracks.
On the television side, ”Game of Thrones” was identified as the most pirated show for the second year in a row and Peter Jackson’s first Hobbit movie, ”The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” saw the most pirated downloads among films.
Following is the top 20 BitTorrent artists in 2013, as tracked by Musicmetric.
1. Bruno Mars, 5,783,556
2. Rihanna, 5,414,166
3. Daft Punk, 4,212,361
4. Justin Timberlake, 3,930,185
5. Flo Rida, 3,470,825
6. Kanye West, 3,199,969
7. Eminem, 3,176,122
8. Jay Z, 3,171,358
9. Drake, 3,139,408
10. Pitbull, 3,138,308
11. One Direction, 2,920,445
12. Maroon 5, 2,857,652
13. Zedd, 2,828,764
14. Nicki Minaj, 2,681,177
15. Adele, 2,594,275
16. Avicii, 2,562,151
17. David Guetta, 2,441,235
18. Linkin Park, 2,352,385
19. Pharrell Williams, 2,336,996
20. Katy Perry, 2,318,740
(Source)