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A Snapshot of the Public BitTorrent Landscape

In a few months BitTorrent will celebrate its tenth anniversary, and in these years it has become the preferred technology to share files online. Today we document a piece of BitTorrent history with one of the most elaborate overviews of the files currently available on public trackers.

When we first started reporting on BitTorrent late 2005, the BitTorrent landscape was totally different from what it is today. There were just a few hundred thousands files being shared, compared to the millions of files that are out there today.

To document the ongoing evolution of BitTorrent and the files people share, today we present a snapshot of the BitTorrent landscape at the end of 2010. We believe that this is the most elaborate and detailed classification of the files currently available on BitTorrent.

The data is gathered with help from BitSnoop and comes from thousands of BitTorrent trackers. It includes (nearly) all torrents that can be downloaded from public torrent sites today, including those that were not active at the time our snapshot was taken.

We start off with an overview of the number of torrents and the associated file-sizes, separated into five broad categories. Later, we will take a close look at some of the sub categories such as TV, movies, books and different types of gaming platforms.

Torrent Files Available Publicly on BitTorrent, December 2010
category torrents % data %
torrentfreak.com
Audio 2,215,469 21.3% 845.0 TB 7.0%
Video 5,507,266 52.9% 9,151.5 TB 76.0%
Software 975,192 9.4% 334.4 TB 9.8%
Games 340,416 3.3% 657.8 TB 5.5%
Other 1,377,560 13.2% 1,049.3 TBp 8.7%
Total 10,415,903 100% 12,037.9 TB 100%

Below are the same categories again, but now with the number of peers who have downloaded the complete file and continue to share it (seeders), and the peers who are currently downloading the files (leechers).

Seeders / Leechers on BitTorrent, December 2010
category seeders % leechers %
torrentfreak.com
Audio 3,759,006 18.6% 1,119,027 11.2%
Video 12,857,328 63.6% 7,337,257 73.5%
Software 1,396,979 6.9% 401,404 4.0%
Games 737,688 3.6% 412,812 4.1%
Other 1,460,175 7.2% 709,466 7.1%
Total 20,211,176 100% 9,979,966 100%

The data above shows us that the number of public torrents exceeds at least 10 million and that close to 30 million peers were sharing a torrent at the time this snapshot was taken.

We also find that video content is by far the most popular category on BitTorrent. The ‘video’ category contains more than half of all torrents available, and two thirds of all active BitTorrent users are downloading or sharing video content.

In terms of available files, ‘games’ is the smallest category with just 340,416 torrents, but in terms of active BitTorrent users ‘software’ is at the bottom with 4 percent. In total, all available files on BitTorrent add up to a massive 12,037.9 TB.

Let’s drill down a bit more, and take a look at the different subcategories. It has to be noted that not all torrents are categorized into a subcategory, and these files will be ignored below.

Movies vs. TV

Movies are by far the largest ‘video’ subcategory with 2,012,432 torrents, followed by TV which lists 1,011,607 torrent files. In terms of downloaders this difference is even more pronounced. Movies have 7,173,330 seeders and 2,851,119 leechers, while TV has 2,626,238 seeders and 1,230,625 leechers. The other video subcategories such as anime, adult and music videos are far behind.

Gaming platforms

PC games are shared the most on BitTorrent, with a total of 113,624 available torrent files. PSP games are in second place with 31,742 torrents, followed by Wii (25,770), Playstation (24,240), XBox (24,108), NDS (18,714), Mobile (2,495) and Mac games (1,936).

Books

One of the categories that has been growing quickly in the last year is ‘books’. We currently count 399,267 available ebook torrents (including magazines), with 662,228 seeders and 172,811 leechers. Ebooks are followed by audio books, with 81,841 torrent files and comics with 15,774 available torrents.

It will be interesting to see how these trends develop over time. We will update this overview in a few months to see what trends are emerging and to find out more about what’s happening in other subcategories.

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  • XxNWOxX

    Good job BitTorrent (:

  • informed

    so much data. Go BitTorrent!

    F1RST!

  • Troll

    Your all a bunch of crooks. Capitalism forever.

  • XxNWOxX

    Crooks? good one

  • Nice

    Did you include torrents from public torrent sites abroad, like asia or roundaboud bulgaria, lithuania russia and the likes?

  • http://torrentfreak.com Ernesto

    @4, if they are tracked by the 9,000 trackers that polled, yes.

  • Curious

    How do you justify your claim that “close to 30 million people” are currently seeding/leeching? How can you claim to be accurately counting actual eyeballs?

    [edit TF: you're right, people should be peers]

    There are definitely some people who simultaneously seed and leech on multiple torrents at once, but your data seems to be counting the *peers connected* to each torrent, rather than counting people. Cross-referencing the IPs connected across the entire torrent “landscape” might give you a better idea, but since your data is from the tracker side of things this seems like it could be difficult.

    I don’t want to be too negative – this is insightful data – but it seems fair to hold you to the standards you hold others to.

  • Freddy

    What surprises me is that Video pretty much destroyed everything else.

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  • Anonymous

    you mean video killed the radio star?

  • Anon

    What is the market value of all that stuff on the original media?

  • Anon

    @Curious:
    A seeder is a peer who has the full content and is only uploading it. A leecher is a peer who is currently downloading the content of a torrent file.

    A seeder can not be both and if he isn’t a seeder he is counted as a leecher, even if he is uploading more data than what he is downloading.

    Peer – client connected
    Leecher – client under 100%
    Seeder – client at 100%

  • Ghostofchris

    @10

    I think he means that if you seed 20 torrents that you count as 20 seeders…

  • http://torrentfreak.com Ernesto

    @7, you’re completely right, “people” should be “peers.”

    Corrected now!

    Cross referencing IPs is pretty much impossible to do with 10 million torrents, unless you’re have a multi-million research budget.

    Even then, having unique IPs doesn’t guarantee that the files are being shared by unique persons, so peers is the best word to use here.

    To explain a bit more, we took the data from tracker that reported the highest counts per hash, so the 30 million is probably a low estimate (not too far off though).

    From what I’ve seen in tests the popular trackers mostly list the same peers (IPs) and the rarer trackers have IPs that are also in the bigger swarms.

  • GT47-88

    @9 And, Internet Killed the Video Star.

  • puddi puddi

    I don’t mean this as criticism… but would like to point out the fact that a very large amount of people hit and run on public trackers. A quick look at the top torrents on demonoid shows a torrent that has been downloaded 38,010 times, yet only has 59 seeders. That leads me to believe that the torrent technology is way more popular than this conservative study shows ay?

  • R7

    What i see is that video is incredible bandwith waster.It accounts for 52.9% of torrents yet consumes 76% of size.Audio on the other hand consumes 21.3% of torrents yet uses only 7.0% of size.Anyone else thinks we need better video compression?.

  • Cake

    @16 R7,

    Nah, we need more chips and salsa.

    XD

  • anon

    wow, id cost less than about 1.5M in harddrives to archive the 12kTB counting .1$ per gb and 13000TB

    @15 yes but, some people download the file/s multiple times

  • anonnn

    kinda sux that i only have like half of the torrent data out there. damn. best get leeching.

  • puddi puddi

    @ 18 I see your point about downloading multiple times, but I think there are more “hit and runners” than there are people downloading the same file mult times. Although I myself do download a file again and stop it for the .torrent file on occasion when I screw something up, but I’m not sure if that would false pos me as a completed dl. Also, when I say hit and runners, I also mean people that have hit a reasonable ratio on the torrent and then direct their bandwidth elsewhere (newer torrent). Also, I’ll have to admit that I’ll hit and run on a public tracker when it has more than enough seeders to conserve my bandwidth for my private tracker.

    my point that i lost is… If only we could see “number of times completed” for all torrents. but I understand that not all trackers support that info

  • Anon

    Thanks for the insight, TF. It’s nice to have torrent statistics that you can trust.

  • neostyles

    That is alot of piracy.

  • abc

    bit torrent RULEZ!!!!

  • PL

    @18 where do you buy your hd’s at? your getting ripped off. 2 tb’s go for .05$ at newegg,com

  • Anonymous

    As piracy rages on, hollywood will abandon the traditional model in favor of advertising, so start expecting all your free movies to include 30 second advertisements littered about them.

    *Comment brought to you by Coke® Zero: That great Coca-Cola® taste and zero calories.

  • Schmitty

    @25, all the shit movies have ads all the way through them…

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  • Anonymous

    How does bitsnoop work? Does it crawl the DHT, or crawl websites hosting torrents?

  • neb

    WHOA…………..

    I am going to stand on the corner with a sign that says “will work for torrent”!

    Ya know dude, it’s okay to promote the argument, both pro and con of BT dl’s.

    It is entirely another thing to be telling.

    You know as well as I do, or anyone else that does this that the numbers will always add up on the side of the law.

    Don’t sell yourself short.
    Let these mofos do their own homework.

    Then watch how the nwo comes into …………..revel models

    this is a sad moment

  • anon

    the problem with this is that it does not take into account the duplicate factor. yea 5.5 mil movies seems impressive, but not so much when you figure the same movie ripped by a ton of different groups at varying qualities.

  • Anonymous

    hrm according to sandvine in canada in 2005 there were about 9million canadians simultaneously logged into and using bit torrent at same time.

    4 months before that there were but 4-5 million.

    I’d say either BT use is WAAAAAAAAY down or the results are off.

    that would say that canada = a third of all bt traffic i dont think so…and thats a 2005 stat it aint gone down ….

  • accurate?

    Your statistics are not entirely comprehensive of the filesharing community as a whole globally because it can’t factor in trackerless activity via PEX and DHT.

    Based upon research from multiple sources, I find that the number of filesharers and torrents globally are MUCH greater than your estimates.

    Your numbers are REALLY conservative.

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  • Fake_Name_here

    And 7TB of that is me.. except I am on private trackers. I think I have an addiction.

  • The Terminator

    Holy Shit!

    The total amount of data transferred is 12,037.9 TB.

    That is 12 PETAbytes. Mind boggling

  • The Terminator

    And I forgot to add the link :P

    How large is a petabyte

    http://gizmodo.com/5309889/how-large-is-a-petabyte

  • keyli96

    doudounemoncler

  • http://torrentfreak.com Ernesto

    @30

    I’d like to believe that tracker reports are more accurate than Sandvine’s estimates. At the time the largest BitTorrent tracker reported just over a million peers, so 5 million unique Canadians would be pretty much impossible.

    Remember that they had to convince ISPs to throttle their users ;)

    @31

    This is a snapshot of the public BitTorrent landscape, not file-sharing in general.

    You’re right about DHT and PEX, these will get the numbers up even more. Personally I don’t think it will increase that much because nearly all of the DHT peers also report to a tracker still. Including DHT wouldn’t have changed the numbers a whole lot (maybe 1/2%) since we make a conservative estimate based on the most active swarm for a torrent.

    The overview/numbers in this post are the best we can do in a relatively short timespan and with our limited means, but I think it’s more accurate than any other description out there.

    @15

    You’re right, the seed/peer counts say nothing about the actual number of downloads of course.

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  • PJay
  • dg100

    Hi, TF.

    Thanks for this article. I haven’t much to say about the stats you’ve posted (for which I’m sure everyone’s grateful) – the data largely speak for themselves.

    I’m half-inclined to ask for a follow-up, one with a more detailed description on what’s on the “average” open tracker, but it would be a substantial undertaking and I fear whatever the answer, it would be playing into the hands of the MAFIAA.

    If you were at all inclined to go into more detail, I’m very curious as to how the “Other” category breaks down in more detail.

    I’d also be interested in how this works out in terms of legally-fully-authorised vs “company-tolerated” vs fully-unauthorised content – although this would obviously produce some potentially very dangerous answers.

    Anyway, thanks for an interesting and enlightening piece. :)

  • Zerglol

    Internet you’re a nasty thingy :)

  • The Doctor

    Interesting reading as a snap shot on Public torrents, but there are so many limitations to the datasets. The number of seeders on any public tracker is usually only a fraction of those that have snatched it and probably more so in this day and age with various quasi legal firms and ISP’s monitoring with infringement notices.

    As the power of the Internet grows, so does the hunger for more media rich content.

    I assume if you looked at the Stats back in 2005, 2000, 1995, then there would be a distinct upward trend towards video as the years progressed, which would make sense.

    I would love to see the stats of the top 100 private trackers, plus the ftp download servers where the high speed connections and seed boxes are really unleashed, as I am sure they would dwarf any of the public trackers in terms of data transfered. But that sort of info is best left private I think, rather than give further ammo to the RIAA/MPAA etc.

    It is certainly a much better effort that Ballart Uni’s report TF.

  • The Doctor

    Ernesto,

    Do you know how these public tracker numbers compare with the legal options such as iTunes?

  • The Doctor

    Just as a further note

    The Piratebay according to their home page has:

    16.3M seeders, 8.3M leechers over 3.2M torrents

    Sure, they are not broken down into the same categories, but it still makes TPB the main public player out there.

  • defcon

    How nice of the writers to take part in the comments section :)

  • Mutualist

    @3 lol, you call people crooks and promote capitalism :D?

    isnt the same to call people idiots and go on to explain why the earth is flat, and why it was created 6000 years ago?

    Capitalism = legalized stealing

  • Anonymous

    The data seems a bit wierd…

    the TV stats are what does it..

    3,916,863 peers (your study.. TV)

    On ONE private UK tv ONLY site =

    750,000 peers (mostly seeders / as in most private sites(more than 92% seeders))

    So , one private uk tv (only) site..

    Has one fifth of the peers sharing tv, than that on ALL publicly tracked files.

    That just seems off..

    Probaly better to suguest that publicly tracked torrents do not represent the true torrent landscape.

    Also more movies shared than tv ? ?

    Again that sounds wrong.

  • João
  • Anonymous

    @43,

    This is only public trackers. Even then “accurate” data is hard to track, as people drop off seed lists quickly. This easily could be more so for tv shows, as they are quicker dl’s.

    It could also depend on what day the study is done on, as different nights have different prime time focus with popular shows. Sundays and mondays for example have numerous popular shows, while Friday and saturdays suck.

  • jon

    @2:

    I guess you means so much STOLEN data. Parasites.

  • jon

    Hi everyone, I’m sorry for that little rant before, the brainwashing the copyright industry has given me takes a turn for the worse every now & then. I become sub-human & my capitalistic view/rage spills onto the pages of torrent freak.
    Finally i promise you all that i do have a life & am not just a soul less corporate foot solider.

    Again my deepest apologies for my moments of glorious stupidity :O)

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  • Anonymous

    you should also produce a list of the very first bittorrent tracker

  • neb

    This is so much Joe Biden.
    #44 true, however, it must be done by the law.
    Millions and billions of peers downloading at the same time?
    Bullshit! Or for lack of a better word, Bullshit!
    If that is true, I would ask all peers to send me a penny. Yep 1cent.
    My ip address is already known, therefore my home address.
    I like pennies!

  • Anonymous

    [quote]The data above shows us that the number of public torrents exceeds at least 10 million and that close to 30 million peers were sharing a torrent at the time this snapshot was taken.[/quote]

    Over 30 million (30,191,142) peers!

  • Anonymous

    50 Dec 15, 2010 at 19:32 by Anonymous

    That would be a very short list..

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  • random guy with a spreadsheet program

    1st table, ‘data’ column v.s. ‘Other’ category has a weird ‘p’ letter added. Typo?

    probably, an interesting addition:

    Dividing the ‘data’ column by ‘torrents’ in first table, we get average torrent size in a category.
    Biggest are Games (1.9Gb) and Video (1.7Gb), while smallest are Software (0.3Gb) and Audio (0.4Gb).

    Dividing the ‘seeders’ column by ‘leechers’ column in second table, we get an average seeds/peers ratio for a category (The bigger the number—the easier it is to download).
    Biggest numbers are in Software (3.5) and Audio (3.4) categories, while smallest (hardest to get)—in Video (1.7) and Games (1.8) sections.

    I think, it worth mentioning that these numbers at least seem to be related.
    Also, average seeds/peers ratio is 2.0 (for each peer there are two seeders)—not bad at all!

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  • Audrey

    If anyone wants to start a torrent site I got 2 domains I want to sell:
    http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2035974

  • caegas

    well all

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