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 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
103 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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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.
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