More than 445k people downloaded the new U2 album illegally! FREE U2 MP3S? FREE SONGS? FREE MUSIC DOWNLOADS? Not really... This Is Stealing! STOP.

THIS INDIE POP SUPERHERO NEEDS TO CLEAR THE AIR:
ILLEGALLY DOWNLOADING AN MP3 SONG IS STEALING!
I don't care if it's by an indie musician, like myself,
or an A List celebrity.  Theft is theft.  Stop stealing music.
BE A HERO:  TELL YOUR FRIENDS & FAMILY TO STOP TOO!

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More than 445k people downloaded the new U2 album illegally

Figures shared with Music Ally by tracking firmBigChampagne reveal that more than 445,000 people illegally downloaded U2’s No Line On The Horizon album in the two-week period between 18th February and 3rd March from BitTorrent.

The chart supplied by the company shows the spike in downloads following the album’s leak in February, apparently due to it being accidentally made available for sale on an Australian digital music store ahead of its official release on 2nd March.

It’s not great for U2, although they’re by no means the only band to suffer from a high-profile pre-release leak in this way. Would all those 445,000 people have bought the album if they didn’t have BitTorrent clients? Nobody knows for sure.

“They’re probably losing out, but to find out how much, you’d have to get into the head of every music fan and assess whether they would have bought the album if they hadn’t gotten it for free,” says BigChampagne’s Eric Garland. “It’s a philosophical debate – there’s no resolution.”

This chart was originally published as part of a longer feature in the Music Ally Report, a fortnightly publication analysing digital music trends and strategies. For a free trial subscription, click here.