Last updated at 12:23, Thursday, 20 September 2012

A-haaar maties! Pass the rum an’ shiver me timbers, it seems we’re surrounded by pirates.

Not ones that shuffle round on wooden legs with parrots perched on their shoulders and personal hygiene problems.

I’m talking about nastier, more evil ones than that – I’m talking about horrid, pimply teenagers who download music free, callously and cold-heartedly denying global, multi-million dollar companies and their superstar acts much-needed money.

Data collected by monitoring firm Musicmetric, and seen exclusively by the BBC, has given some insight into patterns of illegal downloading across the UK.

According to the BBC website, the most illegally shared artist in the UK is Ed Sheeran.

Ed’s + album is illegally shared in the UK with 55,512 on average per month.

This is followed by Rihanna’s Talk That Talk, album with 35,838 shares on average per month, and Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange with 28,239 shares on average per month.

Carlisle doesn’t rate in the top 10 pirate cities which seem to be made up of places with the highest proportion of student slackers per head of population.

The top five are, in order: Manchester, Nottingham, Southampton, Liverpool and Sheffield.

But according to the BBC, the most downloads in ‘CA’ postcodes involve Sheeran.

His music is shared on average 40 times per month by people in and around Carlisle.

People here also share Foo Fighters a lot compared to the UK average.

Which is more encouraging in a musical sense than over-exposed Ri-Ri and the wet Mr Ocean.

First published at 11:27, Thursday, 20 September 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk