Here is an interesting tag cloud of the day. These are statistically the most pirated artists of the last 4 years. I will point out certain people (like Phish or other bands) have a larger than average dominance on the graph due to bootlegging of shows and such. Also on another interesting note, Beethoven is technically out of copyright laws and royalty free so it isn’t his music as such that has been pirated more the performances of it.
Most pirated artists from 2007 - 2010 (Click to Enlarge)
Many artists are not properly represented here because the what.cd community has encouraged their downloads in some way (such as The Beatles) or because the artist in question has encouraged their downloads on what.cd (like The Flashbulb), making it not really “piracy”. Also this counts the same number of downloads of a single, an album, and a box set the same, which is problematic. Users of what.cd also aren’t a representative sample of all internet users (or all internet users who download music).
– What.cd
So, any of these surprised you?