As part of its Digital Music Index, MusicMetric has released the “largest ever public data set showing trends in music on BitTorrent,” in the UK. Unfortunately for anti-sharing lobbyist groups, it shows that despite the blocks against sites like The Pirate Bay and Newzbin 2, it doesn't make a lick of difference.

Torrenting is still continuing unabated, in massive numbers – with Manchester apparently being the biggest file sharing city in the country. The most pirated content throughout the first half of 2012 were albums from Ed Sheeran and Rihanna. Music Metric has said that data from the US and Canada will be released shortly.

Commenting on the data was leader of Pirate Party UK, Loz Kaye, who said: “These figures don't prove anything very much, other than the fact that people like music, and that the people of Manchester are leaders in using technology. They are certainly not evidence of the BPI's shrill claims that ‘a lot of people are getting very rich' from so-called piracy. And as MusicMetric point out, torrents download numbers also include lots of legal files: the actual most downloaded album in those statistics was a legal one.”

He also pointed out that music industry revenue, like that of the movie industry, has been rising in recent years, despite the cries from lobby groups that piracy was destroying it. Ultimately he said, it was that music labels were becoming far less necessary, as artists were able to communicate with fans far more directly and thereby cut out the middle man.

Kaye finished by saying: “We really need to move on from this sterile debate and focus on policy that actually will benefit our shared culture and digital economy.”

KitGuru Says: As usual both sides have their points to make here. The arguments aren't really evolving on either side, so perhaps what Mr Kaye is saying here is worth noting. Perhaps we should just agree to disagree and push forward. What do you guys think? Lets us know below.

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