Suffolk music sensation Ed Sheeran’s debut release is the year’s most pirated album so far, according to a music industry report.

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The Brit Award winner’s album, called +, tops a list of recordings illegally downloaded from “torrent” websites, in which fragments of electronic files are accessed from numerous sites and then assembled.

The figures suggest that 33.5m albums and 9.5m singles were accessed in the UK from the BitTorrent website during the first half of 2012. That compares with 43.6m albums sold legally - either as downloads or physically - during the same period, and 93.6m singles.

The research by global analysts Musicmetric is claimed to be the most in-depth study of the digital music industry.

2 comments

  • Ed Sheerans attitude to those who like his songs, but don't want to pay the few pence for the download is laudable. He understands that it is more important to have 9 million listeners who might want to tell their friends, paid or not paid, than to follow the stingy examples set by some multi millionaires with attitude. Well done Ed, your recipe is well received.

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    ingo wagenknecht

    Tuesday, September 18, 2012

  • Hardly surprising...I doubt many people would actively want to pay for his "music"...

    Report this comment

    merrydancer

    Monday, September 17, 2012

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