Daft Punk, Bruno Mars, Rihanna Top List of 2013's Most Pirated Artists

Published Dec 30, 2013

Thirteen years since Metallica sued Napster, online music piracy still rages on. This year, the artists that have most cause to complain are Bruno Mars, Rihanna and Daft Punk, since they've topped a list of 2013's most widely pirated musicians.Tracking data from BitTorrent, the analysts at Musicmetric [via the Telegraph ] found that Mars and Rihanna each had more than five million illegal downloads. Daft Punk had over four million, while Justin Timberlake had slightly less than four million and Flo Rida had just over three million.Also in the Top 10, all with more than three million illegal downloads, were Kanye West, Eminem, Jay Z, Drake and Pitbull. Other notable acts to make the Top 20, all with over two million downloads, included Nicki Minaj, Adele, Pharrell Williams and Katy Perry.Musicmetric additionally found that Taylor Swift was the most successful artist on social media, adding 29.5 million fans to Twitter, Facebook and other sites. She was followed by Katy Perry with 29.2 million fans and Justin Timberlake with 28.8 million.As for video streams, "Gangnam Style" star Psy led the way with 2.2 billion plays, followed by Bruno Mars with two billion plays and Rihanna with 1.6 billion plays.