50% Of All BitTorrent Downloads are TV-Shows
Written by Ernesto on February 14, 2008Reports show that 50% of all people using BitTorrent at any given point in time do so to download TV-series, quite an impressive number. In total, over a billion TV-shows are downloaded every year, and this number continues to rise.
It is safe to say that BitTorrent is slowly replacing Tivo. Some episodes of popular TV-shows such as “Lost”, “Prison Break” and “Heroes” get up to 10 5 million downloads per episode, spread over hundreds of sites. This number is getting awfully close to the average number of viewers on TV in the US. However, the major difference is that the BitTorrent “viewers” come from all over the world.
In January TorrentFreak published the list of “most downloaded TV-shows“, where we showed that the most popular episode of “Heroes” was downloaded 2.5 million times on Mininova alone. Even more impressive -across all BitTorrent sites- more than a billion episodes are downloaded every year worldwide.
The graph below shows the percentage of .torrent files per category downloaded on Mininova over the last 2 years – over 40 percent are TV-shows. To support this, we analyzed a sample of 400,000 torrents earlier this year. That data indicated that approximately half of all the people using BitTorrent at any given point in time, were using it to download a TV-show.
The popularity of TV-torrents hasn’t gone unnoticed. In fact, there are reports of TV-studios that allegedly use BitTorrent as a marketing tool, by leaking unaired pilots intentionally. While the movie and music studios continue to fight their “war on piracy”, most of the TV-studios lay low.
On the contrary, Anne Sweeney -the president of the Disney-ABC television group- admitted that she was “inspired” after seeing a pirated copy of the hit-show “Desperate Housewives”. The pirated copy of this popular TV show was the main reason (besides the money) for Disney to sell their shows online. “Coming ‘face to face’ with the high-quality, commercial-free pirated version (of Desperate Housewives) told Disney that it was not just competing with other broadcasters, but with digital pirates and as such was an experience that prompted us to do the iTunes deal with Apple.” Sweeney said at the time.
BitTorrent’s popularity hasn’t gone unnoticed by actors either. Masi Oka who plays Hiro Nakamura in the popular show “Heroes”, made some pro-BitTorrent comments earlier this year. When he was in France to promote the series (before they aired), he was surprised to see how many people had already seen the show thanks to BitTorrent. Oka said that BitTorrent is a great promotion tool, but added “Hopefully, if they can buy the DVD after they watch it on BitTorrent, that would be great.”
One of the members of EZTV, the leading TV-torrent distribution group, told TorrentFreak in an earlier interview that he doesn’t think their work has a negative impact on the TV-industry either. “The only possible impacts can see are positive ones,” Boggibill said “it is free publicity, which may lead to higher ratings when people “discover” new shows and also larger numbers of DVD purchases – it is my understanding that many of the people that download TV shows from us are avid TV fans and will usually buy DVD boxsets of shows they like.”
A factor that plays a role in the rise of unauthorized downloading of TV-shows is that most people simply don’t see it as stealing. It is a signal that customers want something that is not available through other channels and it’s more about availability than the fact that it’s free. It’s not a threat, but more an opportunity.
Previously: Danish Pirate Bay Block Breaks EU Law
Next: New and Promising BitTorrent Sites
82 Responses
holy crap. impressive numbers! tracker stats are gonna put Neilson out of business.
Is the percentage of pr0n incorporated in the categories of movies and pictures? I find it somewhat hard to believe that it would fall under “other” taking into account how much of the data transfer over the net that is pr0n or pr0n related.
I refused to bullied by a box, which is why I won’e waste my time to “tuning in” at the specified time. I refuse to hold my pee. And I refuse to “schedule” recordings on a stand-alone device with little other use. All in all, TV is an excellent example of how torrent help sales. While I don’t like spending money, certain shows of ridiculously high quality writing, such as Arrested Development or Mr. Show, I have gone out and purchased them all. Lots of Adult Swim. Some things you just have to own. Pity there are so few.
50% for TV sounds very logical to me given that most of the world does not have direct access to premium TV content, either being anime or american shows/series/cartoons.
Here in greece there is no legal way of watching most of the good stuff I like (Colbert Report, Burn Notice) and of course no freaking way to watch anime. Given that most of europe is in the same state, add russia to the equation and HEY you got 50% of global bittorrent traffic.
If TV networks don’t like torrents of their shows, they should just offer them online exactly as they are broadcasted (with ads and everything) in high quality to EVERYONE. This might halve the torrent traffic.
there is a downside though.
I too download quite some TV-shows after their first airing. But is has a downside for the “industry” none the less. It’s not just free promotion and it doesn’t boost DVD sails (at least not for me). However I never watch the (to me) old episodes when they finally arrive in my country (years later!?!) and hence cut the viewing statistics and ultimately the advertisement and popularity ratings for the shows we prefer to watch “early”.
Therefore these (international) early adoptors using bittorrent drop out of the statistics from the international market as well. But even more, they show a striking point that the industry is missing totally in their old fashioned distribution scemes: There are litterally MILLIONS of customers who are sick of waiting month and years till the fat and lazy companies finally manage to provide their stuff – and take the fast and easy p2p-shortcut!
The sleepy heads in the executive suites just don’t get it!
75% of the content on my NAS are TV shows… American, Canadian and UK.
I’m guessing the lack of content from other countries reflects the poor quality of their product.
I agree with #2 aka Bottles.
Where is pornography figured into that pie chart. Movies? If so I think you have underestimated actual Movies. If it is the “Other” category, again I think the number is grossly underestimated.
@ 4 – Contrary to popular belief, BT usage within the US (even though we can see the shows as they air) is extremely high also. TiVo costs money and BT is so much more convenient to use than a DVR IMO.
You can d/l, watch, archive, and wait for the boxsets to be released :)
This report doesn’t surprises me in the least. Considering the amount of TV shows between the US, Australia and the UK that get put online on a daily basis, there is automatically a higher number of ‘files’ and shows to choose from, thus having a wider appeal to audiences.
is it taboo to use the word “porn”?
re: # 8 – I forgot to add Canadian TV shows into the mix as well. Sorry to all our Canadian BT brethren ;)
[quote comment="289123"]I agree with #2 aka Bottles.
Where is pornography figured into that pie chart. Movies? If so I think you have underestimated actual Movies. If it is the “Other” category, again I think the number is grossly underestimated.[/quote]
Adult content is not included in the Mininova graph, but it was in our earlier analysis linked in the post (8%).
@6:
I don’t think it’s poor quality. It’s mostly because the english ones tend to have more of an international audience in mind, while local ones (wherever they might be) have a local audience in mind.
Same goes for movies (at least where i live it does).
Almost agreeing with you: english speaking TV shows have a very big audience, thus more expensive commercials, thus more money into their production, thus more “oomf”. But money don’t make up for talent (except if you find and hire one). Take for instance Night Watch, a russian $4mil budget movie which excels in almost every aspect. Hollywood has just snatched the director who is now shooting (or cutting) Wanted, a multi-million budget action film.
Talent is everywhere, we are just not in their range.
tivo needz to dai plz.
btw, is there an alternative version of tvrss.net + miro? I mean same functionality, does not need to be free.
As long as I know, tivo needs you to setup each episode and does not have advanced filters (with tvrss i get all the pilots posted in a matter of hours).
On the other hand i think that my question is pointless, cause even if it existed, it would be bound to one region/country.
And thats just one tracker, it would be intreasting to see if stats were similar for smaller private trackers.
Sooner or later, there will be no reason to have a satellite anymore :)
This is exactly what I’ve been doing for about 2 years now. I got rid of cable TV primarily because I didn’t want to pay for programming that I thought was dangerous for my family; Ads that were nearly pornographic, TV series that were super violent, ect.
No now, I download 3 programs per week (Lost, Survivor and The Apprentice) and we watch it on a PC running Media Portal (way better than Microsoft Media Center, and free) and that’s it. No ads, we watch on our schedule and it’s free. Love it.
I think it does boost ratings if anyone is like me….
When I first saw Heroes I told my family/friends how awesome it was and too watch it when it eventually comes out so -1 + 30 = +29 viewers….
lol
One of the members of EZTV, the leading TV-torrent distribution group, told TorrentFreak in an earlier interview that he doesn’t think their work has a negative impact on the TV-industry either
that may be so but wait till hundreds of corporations start saying they are loosing money because people are downloading their shows and not spending the time on tv watching crappy tv comercials.
How long will it be before coke, snuggle softener and many other companies cry that they are faced with an impact because of TV filesharing.
Has anybody that does not live in Australia seen the new Australian drama Underbelly yet. I’m just interested to see how it is doing oversears.
Well…
http://forum.eztv.it/index.php?forum=view_thread&tid=9135
agreed with #6 here in nz we actually have a really good system where you can download our local shows for free off of the national broadcasting site but to be honest we have maybe one good show made here (and its aired on another network so cant be downloaded for free) i have pirated versions of every copy of scrubs and bought the box sets when they have come out funnily enough the season six set came out before it had finished airing we usualy lagg behind you us guys in the series so its easier to download if only we could get all shows on our national network on the site it would be huge
@19; I don’t see any reason why Coke, and other companies would cry due to TV filesharing. Advertisers will go where the audience is. They might cry if EZTV turns down their offer of millions of dollars in advertising but hey, supply and demand baby.
My vision of the future is a such: someone has a brilliant idea for a TV show and wants it to air, but not on a TV network, what’s the point in that? No, if they can get companies to spend advertising dollars directly on their show (and many advertisers do this already – anyone seen the super bowl?) they may as well package up their “TV show” and send it to a torrent distributer who happily uploads the file, high quality, with ads in it. The advantage of the ad version? High speed servers doing the seeding of course…
Let’s cut out the middle man. When television networks are a thing of the past it won’t be soon enough…
I don’t buy music anymore, rarely buy movies, but I’m a big tv and buy alot of boxsets. I love being able to watch my tv shows when i want and not have to plan my day around them thanks to bittorrent
i’ve downloaded all those file types before niggga
Pretty much agree with what’s been said here (the sane stuff, anyhoo :P )
Just wanted to add to the mix that Phishy Bongwaters recently turned me on to TED, the ‘Torrent Episode Downloader’, which downloads all your favourite shows as they hit the feeds. Pretty awesoma powa!
Find it here:
http://www.ted.nu/
Cheers, zarathustra =]
For me, TV-Shows probably make up about 90% of BT Downloads :D. Here in Austria, I would have to wait for the German translation, which ALMOST ALWAYS, suck hard. The voices sound horrible, words are lost in translation and of course, you’ll never hear Jack Bauer say “son of a bitch” on German TV :D
Also, I don’t like lagging behind 1-2 Season or watching the fucking ads every 15min.
When I’m bored, I just watch a show, whenever I want to!
OMG, I agreed. First time I see clearly that content what I download with my BT-client is allmost 90% from TV, old shows like B5, TOS, STG etc.
People shouldnt complain that we are downloading and not buying. Only recently have I started buying DVD’s as I have downloaded them first and I know they are good, I used to download Friends from #downloadfriends on irchighway (which has sadly passed away) but that was because they where released in USA before anywhere else. I recently bought the limited box set of all 10 Series over 35DVD’s for £200 (thats about $400 for your american folk). STOP COMPLAINING THE INTERNET HELPS GET THE PROGRAMS / MOVIES and TV SHOWS OUT THERE.
You guys are idiots if you’re actually buying CD’s or DVD’s these days.
Don’t you see that you ARE SPONSORING THE RIAA/MPAA IFPI to go after and hunt down teenagers ?
For gods sake, stop spending money on those things so the greedy corporations die quicker. Once that is done, only then we will see the true value of culture and a new business model will arise !
8% porn?? LOL porn is actually 80% of my torrents download, the rest are games an some app.
@30
Buying DVDs/CDs will support **AA, but as far as I know, TV episodes are not under the jurisdiction of MPAA. Besides, the boxset behind-the-scenes and deleted scenes make it worth my money.
The article is right. It is about availability and the fact you can watch it straight away or whenever you want. Long live torrents!
[quote comment="289397"]porn is actually 80% of my torrents download.[/quote]
Poor boy!
Fortunately you are not model to all of us.
About 50% of my storage are TV-Shows, 40% movies and 10% apps. No games and … oh no … no porn.
I’ve downloaded some, yes, but it just sucks on the long run and NONE stayed on my disks for long. Meanwhile I’m so fed up with all this porn shit I think there’s almost no chance to raise my interest in that genre ever again. Maybe about 1-2% of my download volume have been porn – an none prevailed. It’s simply becomes boring.
I think porn is highly overestimated in the internet.
Yes, it’s ubiquitous in ads (and offered torrents) and any slimy webmaster tries to make a few bugs with it. But how much is downloaded really? And how much really stays? compared to popular TV-shows and the numbers I can observe in these torrents, porn is really only marginal. Ever seen a porn movie with tenthousends of peers? Nope – not gonna happen! Popular TV shows yield that every week! And simply dwarf porn!
You should update URL of EZTV homepage on that earlier article witch you have now linked as ‘told TorrentFreak’
i know why!
because the tv shows always air first in USA and the other countries want to keep with it without waiting :)
it’s not stealing i pay a tv license which is over a hundred quid a year which if you look at the license terms it covers using PC’s to watch TV
i am paying for it so I’m damn well going to do it
[quote comment="289555"]because the tv shows always air first in USA and the other countries want to keep with it without waiting :)[/quote]
Well that’s just it, but one big reason is also that i hate commercials and there are none in torrents…Just finished downloading todays Idol, Conan and Mythbusters
Holy fuck, that’s really impressive!
I try to download TV shows that haven’t been released on DVD or video, like Daria or MTV’s Fear. If the show is no longer on TV, and it is not sold on VHS or DVD, how else am I supposed to get it?
http://www.livingwithanerd.com
We don’t have that arcane TiVo crap. I don’t watch tv, so I get my shows through bittorrent!
We, the all-mighty consumers and unstoppable market force, call it “globalization”, you corporate whores. Get over it, bitches!
Why people download TV-shows? NO COMMERICALS. INSTANT PAUSE AND REPLY!
:-D
Downloading TV? Heck of a lot easier than borrowing a tape from a friend. We’ve been recording and sharing TV for decades, now we can just do it better.
>> LOL wrote:
>> porn is actually 80% of my torrents download.
> freakfreak
> Poor boy!
> Fortunately you are not model to all of us.
Fortunately, smug self-righteous jackasses like you aren’t a model for the rest of us either.
Go take your pseudo-morality and shove it back up your ass, where it came from.
To Patman (post 30)
Are you saying that all labels are part of the RIAA? I buy CDs almost weekly, and almost always directly from the label or the band.
What you say is true of movies, of course. But all I’m saying is that we should try to encourage alternative means of distribution whenever we can.
Seems to me that if apple was to offer TV shows in a ‘rental’ form instead of purchase only, having a must watch to continue ad at the beginning and a discounted $0.25/$0.50 price they could potentially appease the advertisers, networks, and a good deal of downloaders (at least the ones who don’t mind paying here and there for things).
I’d say 75-80% of my torrent downloads are TV shows.
Forgive me if I missed it in the article – do these numbers represent ‘percentage of bytes flowing through bittorrent’ or ’single units’ – 1 song, 1 tv show, 1 movie?
I have NEVER saw stargate show on the TV!! I downloaded ALL of the episodes off the Bit Torrent.. and what? I am a proud owner of 11-season DVD Set of stargate!.. and I love that show!
So yes, downloading show prompted me to buy the DVD. This way My files are not somewhere on hard drive, I can watch them anytime I want to. Plus the DVD extras are hillarious! =)
Stargate Fan
I didn’t have the change to see Farscape but thanks to BT I watched all the seasons and I’m going to buy the DVD box set soon.
porn is 70 percent of my downloads, anime, music and movies make up the rest, i don’t watch any american tv series
Why isn’t Anime included in TV shows and Movies? You know, it’s just animated TV shows and movies from Japan. Otherwise, there isn’t anything special about and it covers all genres from comedy, thrillers, sci-fi, drama to pr0n. Does “TV shows” solely refer to US American TV shows? And “Movies” means “US American Movies”?
I DL a few shows because I’m never at home in the evenings. If I owned a TV network I’d put all my shows up, with a few commercials still, on bittorent. I don’t understand why so few TV networks utilize the free distribution network that bittorrent provides.
I download TV shows because I don’t like commercials – I don’t see a point in someone trying to trick me into thinking I want to buy something.
Oh yes, it IS also about being free
Seems fairly accurate, over half of my downloads are TV shows that are not available otherwise.
The large section of Anime is more disturbing, whats that all about?
80% of what I download is porn. The rest is tv-shows.
So tr now that i think of it, who needs tivo when you’ve got utorrent? Would def recommend TVtorrents to anyone looking for a good private site to watch the latest and greatest hd shows.
Let me get this straight; Anne Sweeney saw a high-quality pirated DRM free copy of a TV show, in a generic format playable on any machine, and because of this she was inspired to offer lower-quality copies in a DRM crippled propietary format that can only be played on certain systems? Way to go!
I have a DVR as part of my AT&T U-Verse service, but I still prefer to watch copies off the net. Why? The DVR only offers two levels of Fastforward and rewind. An AVI in Media Player Classic allows me to jump to any point in the show instantly, or even do frame step if I want to.
Then there are the shows I can’t even watch here in the US, like Primeval, a British SF show.
As for ratings; It doesn’t matter if most people watch pirated copies of the shows. If you aren’t a Neilson family in the US, or part of a ratings group in other countries, watching a show doesn’t mean crap because you’re not being counted!
That said, the networks should put up good quality, DRM free copies of the shows on their web sites, with the same commercials they have when they’re broadcast. I’d happily download a copy with commercials, if it was legal, free and unrestricted. “Live” TV is like that anyway. Sure, I would probably skip the commercials, but it’s not like I pay attention to them while watching TV anyway.
Why tape/record/burn at tv show when I can download it the next day…in fact you could almost get rid of cable, but at least I don’t feel guilty about downloading something I could have recorded myself.
why i download tv-shows?
1. cable/pay-tv is too expensive and sat is not allowed here in my flat.
2. no ads
3. can watch it asap, not 2 years later in bad synced version
4. can watch it when/where i want
5. only way to get it in english and in 720p!
btw. i’m from austria too ;-)
@45
[quote comment="289691"]smug self-righteous jackass … take your pseudo-morality and shove it back [/quote]
What’s wrong with you? You feel pissed because someone doesn’t glorify watching porn and says, it becomes boring by the time?
If all you do is watching porn, then well: just enjoy it!
Most people just seem not to belong to that group that enjoys watching essentially the same stuff over and over again.
You feel the urgent need to express your desire to use bittorrent for 80% of porn consumption, as several people here felt obliged to stress as well? So what?
Then the numbers should just tell you that other people obviously have better things and more interesting stuff to do (from their point of view) in their lives than to join your “hobby”.
He wrote:
[quote comment="289513"]Ever seen a porn movie with tenthousends of peers? Nope – not gonna happen! Popular TV shows yield that every week! And simply dwarf porn![/quote]
If you feel to have to retaliate with insulting and dispraising, just because someone said, using bittorrent the way you favour it isn’t the way all others do, it only supports what he wrote: poor boy!
If you feel the need to state that you consume 80% porn, don’t expect others to be impressed by that … or even respect you for your inferior language later on – they might just as well despise you for what you are shouting out to the world either way.
Learn to deal with opposing opinions propperly – or be regarded as pathetic for a good reason!
I think if you’re bright and motivated to find whatever you can for free in this life, be it online or real-world, you should be commended. Does the notion of a ‘windfall’ not exist anymore? What’s the difference between the wind that knocks over a tree and an uploader? None as far as I can tell. Both forces of nature. Finders keepers, people!
I also d/l tv shows, currently keeping up with “Supernatural”. Most of the time it’s because my girlfriend and I were introduced to a show that’s already on so we buy some on DVD and use BitTorrent to catch up on the rest, plus using the Comcast DVR (their “HD” service blows, btw). We playback much of the d/l’ed shows through our xbox360.
I use tvrss.net or the private tracker tv.torrents.ro for my show selection.
Should traditional tv go south or the advertising system change due to less and less normal viewers, studios could pick up independent filmmakers to create shows and re-design ads to appear in the lower third (or quarter) of the screen so they can’t be easily removed and are still viewed even when downloaded through BT.
It’s just a matter of adapting the current tv system to meet the changes in technology and demand of your global audience.
Buying tv show box sets is still a good idea because that way you get the extra features not present in downloaded episodes.
http://arlof.com/
[quote comment="289120"]there is a downside though.
I too download quite some TV-shows after their first airing. But is has a downside for the “industry” none the less. It’s not just free promotion and it doesn’t boost DVD sails (at least not for me). However I never watch the (to me) old episodes when they finally arrive in my country (years later!?!) and hence cut the viewing statistics and ultimately the advertisement and popularity ratings for the shows we prefer to watch “early”.[/quote]
Actually, at least where I live, TV studios have been fighting quite hard to buy the rights for US shows. As an example. One of the major networks as just bought ‘Cashmere Mafia’, and they only aired 4 or 5 shows… Your statement was true, 2 or 3 years ago. But things are changing. Bittorrent is improving the profits of american tv-studios. They manage to sell their stuff much more quickly to foreign countries. And networks actually battle to get all the “best shows”.
I don’t see why anyone should have to wait for indeterminate amounts of time for TV shows/films that have been made already to air or come out on soon to be defunct dvd.
Pay £25 (£50) for a BluRay? No way!
If they want to put tv shows on websites so we can download them, ads and all that seems like the perfect compromise. If they are too greedy/lazy to do that… thank you Bit Torrent!
Gee, I thought music would rate a lot higher. Filesharing has changed so much since the days of Napster.
the thing with p0rn is that its way to vast to be sucessful on torrents. Seed and leechers alike are spread out to countless files, making it harder to download. The swarm aint efficient enough.
Rapidhare is a pornographic godldmine…when you know how to search
it would be a lot better if the pie chart used contrasting colors…. to make it well noticeable…
Torrentfreak’s own post says that 60 percent of video downloads are “adult oriented”
“It’s hardly surprising that almost 60 percent of all illegally downloaded video files were “adult-oriented”. TV shows were the second most popular at 20 percent, and only 5 percent were “mainstream movie content”. With regards to legal video downloads, sixty-two percent were TV shows, 24 percent were music videos and 6 percent were movies.”
Books, Anime, and Software… Should I be surprised at where they stand at now?
maybe we can learn something from this. when i say we i mean the the big three, or phone if you include fox. give the public a chance to view shows at when and where they want. fine give them commercials if you must, but give them a chance to catch up on there stories if they happen to miss them. hell i missed lost on V-day and i need to see it soon. so what do i do….
porn trumps all when it comes to consuming bandwidth.
tv shows are big on torrents because there is no better (or few) alternatives.
porn does. you can get direct downloads from porn sites. add to that torrents,other p2p,bin newsgroup,rapidshare,etc
porn is the best fuckin business in the world. low cost, huge demand and sex !!!!!
OMG the porn lobby is out in force.
Do not,– I repeat DO NOT make eye contact. They will pop wood.
Actually, the Usenet newsgroups are the best place to get porn. Dozens of different newsgroups devoted to every taste and fetish you can imagine with hundreds of pics and dozens of movies posted every day.
i know i download tv shows because of the availability. i live in mexico. if i was able to watch them here at the same day or the next that it airs in the usa (without subtitles) id defenetly stop using torrents greatly.
50% sounds about right. TV shows and anime account for about 80% of my downloads. 15% movies and the rest misc stuff (music, ebooks).
People forget when looking at these stats that mininova doesn’t host porn. Besides, porn is one of the few things not usually suited for torrents (except for a few of the most popular titles).
sounds like what i do i miss tv so have to find a way to watch the missed episode then just delete but im a little surprised that movie were not hit as hard. and software isnt even hurting off of it the way i see it is that some people are to poor or cant afford a mass of movies or expensive graphics software so just fully functional versions for experimental use. i don’t even think that the movie industry would gain as much money or what ever back cause if i wasn’t downloading i still wouldn’t be buying
well this is because ppl get good download speeds using torrents rather than other direct download links…..anyways if u want to download the latest tv shows u can download them from http://www.iwillsearch4u.com
yes it is true
Big shock when most of the world is denied quality content because everything must flows threw proper channels when and how BigBIZ wants.
Hi,
Your information is really great. But for this we need to go the place where we can make our videos and people can share that videos. Before submitting to your given website. For this I found best place where we can download any video from Youtube, Megavideo, etc.
You can download from vid23.com because you need guidelines to create any video so download the original quality version of the videos, TV shows from video.com
Thanks
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