Almost 50% of all people using BitTorrent at any given point in time do this to download TV-series, while only 10% of the available torrents are TV related. People who download TV-shows also have one of the best share ratios, only Anime fanatics beat them.

The statistics presented here are gathered by SumoTorrent, and based on a sample of more than 400.000 .torrent files collected from several public BitTorrent sites. From now on these statistics will be published on a monthly basis, so we can keep an eye on changes in the download and sharing preferences of the average BitTorrent user.

What is Hot?

TV-series are by far the most shared files on BitTorrent. Nearly 50% of all the people who use BitTorrent at any given point in time do this to download a TV-show, even though the number of available torrents are much lower than for Music or Video. The second most popular torrent category based on the number of downloaders and uploaders is Video (15.7%), followed by Games (8.6%), Music (7.8) and of course XXX (6.0%).

As we will see later on, these figures are quite different from the number of .torrents that are available.

The statistics are calculated based on the info from the trackers, this means that someone who’s downloading 2 music albums at the same time is counted twice. However, we don’t expect any significant differences between the categories, so the percentages should be pretty accurate.

What type of torrents are offered?

Music (25.9%) and Video (24.2%), followed by Applications (13.3%), are in the lead if we look at the number of available torrents. Games (7.8%), XXX (5.1%) and Anime (4.3%) are less popular.

Even though 50% of the people use BitTorrent to download TV-series, only 10% of the available .torrents on public trackers are TV related. This means that on average the swarms (seeds + peers) are greater for TV-torrents, not a big surprise because an average episode of a popular TV-show like Lost is downloaded by more than 500.000 people in a week.

Share Ratios?

Sharing is one of key features of BitTorrent etiquette. The more people that are sharing a file, the faster other people are able to download it.

If we take a look at the sharing ratios of the categories we see that Anime fans have an impressive share ratio of 2.5, and are sharing the most. Anime fans are followed by people who download Music (ratio 1.9) and Applications (ratio 1.5) respectively.

XXX downloaders are probably looking for a quick fix, and are more the “hit-and-run” type (ratio 0.38). The category Video has the lowest share ratio, a disappointing 0.27, let’s hope we see some improvement there next month when we publish more statistics and perhaps even some emerging trends.