The U.S. music piracy rankings: Gainesville (FL), New York, Los Angeles top the list

Go Canada Eh!

Australia has the highest population to download ratio. Beat Canada again!

Of course the US is at the top >_>

Wonder what's going on in china...

Goodness, I haven't downloaded any songs this year. I better get with the rest of the country and catch up. But, Rihanna? Really? I guess 2012 really is the end of the world and the Zombies started their take over. (Or at least mindless sheep.)

Does this mean Gainesville, FL ranks #1 in the world for most pirated music?

Not to sound naïve, but are some of these downloads actually legitimately released for free by artists who value building their fan base?

Music should be free, concerts should be paid for.
Movies should be cheaper and release faster. this long wait from cinema to video is one of the HUGE ****ups and reasons for piracy.
Games... keep it cheap and provide adequate demos.

its not hard...

"The iTunes Store's revenues in the first quarter of 2011 alone totalled nearly US$1.4 billion; by October 4, 2011, the store had sold 16 billion songs.

As of September 2012, the iTunes Store possesses 400 million active user accounts."

Maybe try talking to Apple about their profits? Greed is never satisfied.

We already knew that, just look at the iSheep sales

Even if it wasn't online sharing, it'd be offline. Just like the old days of mix tapes.

USA is on top mostly cause of the high population, on the download to population ratio it is lower than I expected it to be. Countries in 2, 3, 4 and 6th places are way up there though. I'm not sure what to think of India, either they are very respectful and don't pirate much or most of the country has not internet access cause their ratio is extremely low.

India has a positively miniscule piracy rate considering they have about 3x the population of the US, yet only about 1/11th the downloads.

Maybe India has a higher moral backbone then most of the world.

USA is #1 USA, USA!

Since the beginning of the year I've allegedly downloaded over 1800 songs or about 200 albums, a fair contribution for Canada. My theory is load up while you can, it won't be around for much longer. Except the Sneakernet will always prevail, at which point portable hard drives will be able to contain multiple Terabytes of data ripe for the sharing. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." Tanenbaum, Andrew S. (1996). At least until they lock down the audio files in such a way that you can't reproduce them, and even that would surely be cracked within a matter of days.

If the audio can be played back at all it can be recorded and made free

"Rihanna’s ‘Talk that Talk’ was the most downloaded release globally with 1.2m"

This is so awful...I don't get it. There is literally unlimited music out there to pick from and people pick Rihanna to pirate the most? I always thought that it was just the radio stations who pumped up and advertised that crap, but people actually seek this horrible music out. It totally confirms to me that people can have the whole world of music out there, but will still settle for garbage.

They pirate Rhianna BECAUSE TV and radio advertise their music so much and TV and radio advertise them so much because people look for them, it's a vicious circle really.

Perhaps it's because the sort of imbecile that thinks Rihanna is where it's at is also the sort of imbecile that thinks piracy is a neat idea?