Have music download charts been cooling off with the weather? A quick glance at the monthly numbers shows not for most of the regular acts! The top10 music artists for September, according to file sharer numbers for music downloads in P2P networks, are the same artists as we have seen last month in August. That being said, there has been some movement within the rankings. Plus, a few other artists have been climbing up from the lower ranks and are poised to steal some of the top seats in the coming weeks.
LINKIN PARK
Let’s begin with last month’s tragic No. 1. After the news about Linkin Park’s singer Chester Bennington on July 21, demand for the band’s music skyrocketed. The number of fans downloading files of their songs had increased from the previous months to 583,340 P2P users in August, which made Linkin Park the most popular band among file sharers. Now that a few weeks have passed, the number of file sharers dealing in music downloads decreased slightly to 437,988, which still places the band at a strong fourth place in this month’s top list.
ED SHEERAN
Who danced through the hearts of file sharers in September? Hint: We called him the comeback kid of 2017 in an article earlier this year – and he’s earning that moniker again. Ed Sheeran has risen back to the top with 526,046 file sharers in September. But this has nothing to do with a surge in downloaders in recent weeks. Ed Sheeran’s fan base among file sharers remained on a relatively high level over the past few months, a rare boon among the music artists on this list – except number 2 and 3. It wasn’t even a dramatic loss when numbers dropped slightly following the boost fueled by the release of his new album “Divide” in March. During that event, the number of daily P2P users downloading files jumped from 32,200 on March 1 to 133,200 on March 3. In total, more than 5 million file sharers have downloaded and shared Ed Sheeran files this year so far. If we don’t filter for those active on several days and just add up the daily numbers, we get an unbelievable 12,069,164 P2P users for the year. That breaks down to an average of 43,888 people who downloaded at least one file containing music from the auburn-haired crooner each day.
DRAKE AND KENDRICK LAMAR
For comparison, let’s take a quick look at the second and third slots. Drake and Kendrick Lamar each moved up one rank in this month’s charts. Their total number of file sharers came in at about 40,000 to 50,000 lower than Ed Sheeran’s in September. Looking at a yearly comparison, the total numbers for the top 3 are quite close as well, and the battle for the top 2017 spot still rages. Since the year started, 3,814,000 file sharers downloaded Kendrick Lamar’s music and 4,612,306 went for Drake songs.
TOP CHART CLIMBERS IN SEPTEMBER
TAYLOR SWIFT'S REIGN ENDS AS THINGS GET REAL FOR CARDI B. - ALSO AMONG P2P MUSIC DOWNLOADS?
One of the winners – probably an unsurprising one, since she spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard charts – is surely Taylor Swift. The pop darling moved up 29 ranks with her new single “Look What You Made Me Do” and landed at number 16. But her reign didn’t last long, as Taylor got dethroned after three weeks by Cardi B., who made history with her song “Bodak Yellow”. According to Billboard magazine, the hit is only the second song by an unaccompanied female rapper to hit No. 1 in the HOT 100’s history*. Even though Cardi B.’s success is still quite fresh compared with charts-veteran Taylor Swift, we snuck a peek at her file sharing numbers. For now, she’s not really close to reaching a Top50 spot yet, since the number of file sharers slowly increased from almost 2,500 per day to slightly more than 4,600 by the end of September. But let’s see how the coming weeks unfold; the 24-year old rapper might just walk her red-bottomed heels all the way up the charts!
MAROON 5
Gearing up for their sixth studio album drop in a few weeks, Maroon 5 just put out a new song: “What Lovers Do” featuring SZA. This new release props them back up in the list of top 50 artists among P2P users – after only a short fall from the list. They climbed up 25 ranks to spot 40. But we’re sure that they will continue to move upward – at the latest once the new album hits P2P networks.
FOO FIGHTERS
On June 1, 2017, the alt-rock legends put out their new single “Run”, which caused a very small spike in the number of P2P users looking for Foo Fighters. These figures exploded from slightly above 4,000 users to 7,000 and actually stayed up between 5,000 and 6,000 daily users until shortly before dropping their album “Concrete and Gold” on September 15, 2017. The first music files titled “Concrete and Gold” from the Foo Fighters appeared on September 12, 2017, and have been downloaded by more than 160,000 file sharers since then. In total, 250,351 P2P users downloaded music files of the band in September and earned them rank 30.
Source: TECXIPIO PIC Definition: Number of file sharers: How many peers shared at least one file of the respective most-trending artists within a certain period?
Other sources:
*http://ew.com/music/2017/09/25/taylor-swift-cardi-b-hot-100-history/