Singer revealed to have most pirated album of 2012

He may have the most illegally downloaded album of the year so far but Ed Sheeran probably doesn't mind too much, having said he thinks file sharing is OK so long as fans come see him live.

As reported on Gigwise, a new study has revealed that Sheeran's album '+' is being downloaded illegally around 55,000 times a month so far in 2012 - making it the UK's most popular amongst file sharers ahead of Rizzle Kicks, Rihanna and Lana Del Rey.

However, speaking to the BBC about illegal file sharing, Sheeran said earlier this year that it doesn't bother him too much and that these things are 'all relative'.

"There's a decent balance between - you can live off your sales and you can allow people to illegally download it and come to your gigs," he said.



Adding: "My gig tickets are £18 and my album is £8, so it's all relative."

According to the statistics, UK music fans were responsible for 43,263,582 illegal downloads in the first six months of 2012 alone. Ed Sheeran proved the most popular artist with Rizzle Kicks and Rihanna closely following him.



The numbers, deduced from a company named MusicMetric monitoring the activity on BitTorrent, a popular illegal download site, showed that Manchester is the ciy downloading the most illegal material with Nottingham and Southampton also figuring highly.

Photos: Ed Sheeran live at iTunes Festival 2012