With the TECXIPIO infographic, we’ve put together 10 things worth knowing about file sharers in the United States when it comes to trending entertainment content. Statistics about file sharers, which vary from country to country, provide unique insights into consumer preferences and the entertainment industry’s different target markets. With this analysis, we provide a better understanding of what’s trending among U.S. peer-to-peer users. The facts listed below are drawn from file sharing activity during the first six months of 2017.
1 – WHAT’S TRENDING OVERALL IN U.S. FILE SHARING?
In the first half year 2017, a daily average of 1,347,624 P2P users in the United States downloaded and shared at least one file over P2P networks.
2 – HOW DOES THIS NUMBER SHAPE UP AGAINST WORLDWIDE P2P ACTIVITY?
With 4.78% of worldwide P2P users, the United States came in fifth place among countries with the highest number of file sharers. The countries who beat the land of the free in file sharing? Russia (14.56%), China (10.77%), Brazil (5.77%) and India (5.31%).
Interested in reading more about what’s trending among file sharers worldwide? Check out our article discussing the top 5 file sharing countries!
3 –Torrent client statistics show many still flock to uTorrent!
Compared with other top file sharing countries, P2P users in the United States use a diverse range of torrent clients to share files. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a clear favorite: Like their peers in India and Russia, U.S. file sharers tend to prefer uTorrent, which houses the largest single chunk of activity from U.S. file sharers at 37.4%. Other clients used were:
libtorrent – 16.2% uTorrent mac – 5.2% Azureus – 4.6% qBittorrent – 4.2% Transmission – 2.5%
4 – TYPES OF CONTENT: WHAT’S TRENDING?
P2P users in the United States contribute the fifth-highest number of files to worldwide file sharing networks. But what kinds of files are landing on these P2P networks? To find out what’s trending on these channels in the U.S., we analyzed the files being shared every day and broke them down by content type. After plotting our findings, we saw that movie titles are still most popular thing to pass around for P2P users in the U.S. An average of 624,470 P2P users download and share at least one movie title per day.
Movie titles: 624,470 Series titles: 390,778 Music artists: 260,753 Games titles: 127,432 E-books (not mapped): 58,591
(Note: These numbers are based on daily average file sharers who shared at least one file. An individual file sharer might share several files and even different types of content on a particular day.)
5 – MOVIE PIRACY DATA EXPOSES WHAT'S TRENDING IN THE U.S.
The subset of P2P users who downloaded and shared movies in the United States is almost four percentage points below the worldwide average of 50%. This places the Americans behind India (78%), Brazil (56%) and Russia (50%). Fellow world power China, meanwhile, only saw 32% of its file sharers dealing in movie titles. The U.S.’s top 5 movie titles in the first half of 2017 were downloaded by an average of 1.3 million file sharers each. Meanwhile, in Russia, the top 5 titles were downloaded by an average of 4.7 million Russian file sharers each, which is almost fourfold! Nevertheless, movie piracy is still rampant stateside. And the data surrounding it can even be turned into an advantage for the U.S. entertainment industry. By analyzing what’s trending among your target groups and even identifying regional differences, you can make more informed decisions about how to distribute other content. In our article “How movie piracy data can benefit the film industry in India”, we present three case studies that illustrate how valuable these kinds of data can be!
6 – WHAT’S TRENDING AMONG GAMERS IN THE UNITED STATES?
P2P users in the United States don’t seem to be particularly interested in sharing game files. Each day, a measly 127,432 gamers share files, which is 9.5% of all file sharers. This relatively low share puts P2P users’ interest in games at nearly 10 percentage points below the worldwide average of 19.4%. Despite the relative insignificance of this type of content in the country, we were still curious about what games were trending among P2P users. Turns out, the top 5 most popular titles in the United States (by number of file sharers in the first six months of 2017) are:
1. “The Sims 4” – 424,503 2. “Waves” – 291,216 3. “Minecraft” – 242,855 4. “Grand Theft Auto V” – 229,924 5. “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” – 219,097 7 – MUSIC GENRE PREFERENCES SHOW WHAT’S TRENDING IN THE U.S.!
As the birthplace of many modern music genres, the United States unsurprisingly has a strong taste for tunes. Nearly 20% of total file sharing activity in the land of Elvis and Beyoncé belongs to music – making it the most popular segment compared with other top file sharing countries! The top list of music artists being shared lay out what’s trending: hip-hop and R&B. True to this trend, a total of 793,038 P2P users downloaded and shared at least one file of Drake’s music within the first six months of 2017, earning him the title of most popular artist.
The top 5 music artists by number of file sharers from January to June 2017 in the United States:
1. Drake – 793,038 2. Kendrick Lamar – 626,051 3. Future – 567,090 4. The Weeknd – 418,312 5. Migos – 403,626
8 – WHAT’S TRENDING AMONG AMERICANS GLUED TO THEIR TV SHOWS?
If you can name the zombie series that ran on AMC, you’ve got the answer to what’s trending among television fans in the United States. Spawning eight new episodes of Season 7 in the first quarter of 2017, AMC’s “The Walking Dead” led the list of the most popular TV series in the first half year of 2017 with 1,120,797 P2P users. In a different genre, but spilling a similar amount of blood, “Vikings” earned the third spot with 691,018 U.S. file sharers for the same time period. It should be noted that the Norse drama managed to capture those numbers while releasing only 5 new episodes.
9 – WHICH CITIES IN THE UNITED STATES CLAIM THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF ACTIVE FILE SHARERS? Based on the top 5 rankings of what’s trending in the United States, the highest numbers of P2P users were seen in major cities such as Houston, Los Angeles and Chicago.
10 – MOST-USED ISPs BY FILE SHARERS IN THE UNITED STATES: There are several ISPs that U.S. file sharers use to spread files around the globe. According to the top 5 rankings listed above, the most commonly used providers are Comcast Cable, Time Warner Cable and AT&T U-verse.
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Source: TECXIPIO PIC Definition: The file sharing data is based on number of unique file sharers in the United States: How many peers (file sharers) shared at least one file of the respective content within a certain time period?