Somebody That We Used To Buy? Gotye Among Most Pirated Artists Worldwide

It seems that our musical friends across the Atlantic simply can’t get enough of Gotye.

Though things have relaxed somewhat since the “Somebody That I Used To Know” chart conquerer was knocked off his eight week reign at the top spot by Carly “Call My Maybe” Rae Jepsen, there’s no denying his continued popularity in the international market.

His two-month tenure at the top of the Billboard charts looks all the more impressive now given new statistics that have been released showing that Gotye’s third album, Making Mirrors – that contains the record-breaking single – is one of the most illegally downloaded albums of 2012.

Along with his all-conquering song being the most streamed single of the year according to the UK’s new streaming chart; and its body-paint video clip became one of the most watched YouTube videos of all time, (sitting at over 320+ million views at last count) – Mr. Wally DeBacker can now reluctantly add (one of the) ‘most illegally downloaded artists in the world’ to his plaque.

According to BBC News, a global BitTorrent and statistics tracking site called MusicMetric revealed their study to the British news giant in what is believed to be the biggest analysis of its kind to be conducted.

The statistics found that while the UK was placed second as the biggest downloader of illegal music in the world, logging nearly 44 million pirated downloads for the first six months of the year; the US clearly topped the list, with a staggering 96,681,133 downloads tracked within the same timeframe.

MusicMetric also revealed that Gotye’s Making Mirrors fell within the Top 10 of the most illegally downloaded records from the period of January to June of this year, meaning that while Mr. Wally De Backer was slogging through his American press duties, Coachella appearance and national tour – which helped push him to the top of the charts – millions more were simply ripping his album.

MusicMetric‘s public artist ranking for Gotye, shows that – at the time of writing – there were 8,662,203 BitTorrent downloads of the artist within the last week, with a total number of pirated downloads hovering somewhere between 29,000 – 34,000

He wasn’t alone of course, topping the Top 10 most downloaded list was Barbadian pop superstar Rihanna, whose album Talk That Talk was the most illegally downloaded for the year with 1,228,313 downloads.

In second place was the UK singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran, whose 2011 record + was downloaded an average of 55,512 times every month in his native UK. Who rather patriotically makes him the most downloaded artist in his native country. Other artsists in the top 10 included UK hip hop duo Rizzle Kicks, British songstress Jessie J and unlikeable R&B star Chris Brown.

While the US and the UK were the two biggest downloaders of pirate music in the world, MusicMetric‘s statistics show Australia was no saint when it came to obtaining music either; falling just outside the top five behind Italy with 33,158,943 illegal downloads, Canada (23,959,924) and Brazil (19,724,522).

Down Under we clocked in approx 19,104,047 illegal downloads between January and July, still the US’s illegal activity is nearly 8x time that figure.

While Gotye’s popularity can’t be strictly measured, all those downloads certainly have helped, America will be having De Backer back to perform on the legendary Late Show With David Letterman in a few weeks time.

Although Letterman’s late-night CBS program doesn’t rate like it used to – competing with other media as well as losing the ratings rankings to competitor Jay Leno - Late Night‘s 3 million plus viewers consists of a key younger, music-buying demographic.

Better bookmark Gotye’s MusicMetric page and see if that’s reflected in torrenting as well.

In related news, since Gotye’s return back home to Australia, he parodied the surfeit of covers of his world-dominating tune and announced an Australian tour.

Interestingly, Splendour In The Grass co-founder and recent Falls Festival partner Jess Ducrou told the audience of a Brisbane BIGSOUND panel that she’d attempted to wrangle Gotye to headline this year’s Homebake festival. “When I had my Homebake hat on,” Ducrou told the crowd, but had been turned down because De Backer “wanted to do his own stadiums” – trumping for his national tour this December.

“It would have been perfect,” laments Ducrou, while One Louder Entertainment founder and director Bill Cullen openly conjectured that “festivals with more money than Homebake would’ve easily payed half-a-million.” While just as many more would have downloaded him no matter where he played.