New PRS for Music report shows stream-ripping piracy is rampant in the UK

By Emmanuel Legrand 

The UK music piracy landscape has changed radically over the past five years, with the rise and rise of stream-ripping as the most prevalent way to access pirated music, while BitTorrent sites are becoming less used by consumers, according to a new study carried out by online rights monitoring company INCOPRO for British rights society PRS for Music.

  According to the study, usage of stream-ripping services has "dramatically increased" by 1390% between 2016 and 2019, and is now "overshadowing all other illegal online music activity in the UK." Data used for the research was taken from INCOPRO’s Identify database, consisting of over 17,000 piracy sites based on their estimated use in the UK, and a sample of 100 of the most popular stream-ripping services.

  PRS for Music CEO Andrea C. Martin said the rise of piracy via stream-ripping services has to be put in the current context of the Covid-19 pandemic, since the rise of illegal consumption of music will have an impact on the bottom-line of organisations such as PRS.

Foster a secure digital environment

  “Since this research was conducted," said Martin, "the world has changed beyond what anyone could have imagined due to Covid-19. The prolonged absence of income from live performance means that revenues generated on legitimate digital platforms are more important than ever. While the report shows that our efforts are going in the right direction, it is equally clear that we must persist and continue to work closely with both government and the wider music industry to foster a secure digital environment for music creators and consumers alike.”

  Although stream-ripping services account for 3 of the top 50 piracy websites, according to the study, up 4% from the previous report completed in 2016, they represent an increasing traffic. BitTorrent (15 sites) and Cyberlocker host (17 sites) are still "the most common categories of sites which contain music content." The proxy/other sites (13 sites) category has slightly increased since the previous report.

  Key findings of the report include:
  > Stream-ripping services are found to account for a noticeable proportion of the overall music infringement activity in the UK. Usage of stream-ripping services accounted for 80.2% of the top 50 specifically music infringing sites;

  > The stream-ripping service with the highest usage in the UK, by far, is the site y2mate.com, which accounted for 47% of the combined top 50 specifically music infringing site usage in October 2019. 
  > The legitimate service most abused through stream-ripping is YouTube, both in terms of the number of sites which provide stream-ripping capabilities for the service (80/100 of the sample surveyed) and the percentage of usage that takes place on YouTube specific infringing sites. Spotify is now the second most affected service, overtaking SoundCloud since the 2016 research. Deezer, Amazon Music and Tidal were amongst other popular licensed platforms most targeted. 
  > The main user points of entry to stream-ripping services are found to be direct access to the services’ domain and through search engines, with the exclusion of stream-ripping software, with stream-ripping download sites are directly accessed 69% of the time;
  > Web-based stream-ripping services rely predominately upon advertising for revenue, but stream-ripping apps, stream-ripping plug-ins,and stream-ripping software also include payments as a source of funding.
  > Of 60 stream-ripping services analysed to determine server locations and hosting providers, over half (32) were found to be based in the US. However, the authors of the study warn that this figures may be misleading, "as 25 of the services use the content delivery network Cloudflare, which could mask their true hosting provider’s location, leading to additional challenges for copyright infringement notifications."

Piracy alive and kicking

  “This report shows that music piracy is very much still alive and kicking, and that stream-ripping is now responsible for a mammoth proportion of the overall piracy problem," said Simon Bourn, Head of IP and Litigation at PRS for Music. "Streaming royalties now account for over 20% of our members' income, and the popularity of this illegal activity has a severe and direct impact on the royalties we can collect for them from legitimate services. Each time a stream is ripped, the user is then listening to and consuming that rip outside of the licensed ecosystem."

  Bourn said PRS will use "all possible measures" to prevent the existence of stream-ripping services, "in order to maximise the royalties we collect for our members and to ensure they receive fair remuneration for their work."

  He also expects those involved in the system, including app stores, software and plug-in platforms, ad networks, YouTube and other licensed services, "to play their own parts in preventing these illegal services from stealing music and depriving songwriters, composers and music publishers of their rightful reward."