The Beatles revealed as the most pirated act in the world

The Beatles are the most pirated artist in the world, according to new information released by a leading anti-piracy monitoring company. The Fab Four top the list, which is based on the number of illegally uploaded files found on websites that have been issued with takedown requests in the past few years. MUSO, who released the data to Music Week, revealed 186,876 files featuring The Beatles music have been removed from the internet with an average of 1,000 downloads per file. This equates to nearly 190 million illegal downloads per year.

Fleetwood Mac finished second to The Beatles with 72,984 files removed – less than half the number involving The Beatles music. Further down the list are big name artists such as The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and ABBA.

Sites monitored by MUSO’s dashboard system include cyberlocker sites, illegal streaming services and torrents. Data from P2P file sharing sites such as The Pirate Bay are not included in MUSO’s stats.

The Top 10 in full is as follows:

1. The Beatles (187,687 uploaded files)
2. Fleetwood Mac (72,984 uploaded files)
3. Bob Marley (60,024 uploaded files)
4. Led Zeppelin (59,011 uploaded files)
5. Cliff Richard (56,576 uploaded files)
6. Stevie Wonder (45,496 uploaded files)
7. Jimi Hendrix (44,093 uploaded files)
8. Elvis Presley (40,794 uploaded files)
9. ABBA (35,193 uploaded files)
10. The Rolling Stones (34,444 uploaded files)

Source: http://www.nme.com