´Beneath the Skin’ is one of the top illegally downloaded albums
Data collected by seatsmart.com suggest that ‘Beneath the Skin’ is one of the albums that has been downloaded illegally most often in the past few months. The study “… looked at the top 10 ranked albums from the Country, Rock, Alternative, Rap, R&B, EDM, Christian, Classical, Folk, and Overall Top Albums charts.” [They] then looked up the downloads for each of those albums on Kickass Torrents, the world’s most popular site for illegally downloading music.“
According to this analysis, albums in the "folk” category get downloaded illegally more often than albums in the “rock” category. “The top 10 Folk albums get downloaded almost 1700 times a day on average. The top Folk album in terms of downloads (Beneath the Skin – Of Monsters and Men) has been downloaded more than all but the top 2 albums in Billboard’s overall top albums chart.”
Interestingly, Beneath the Skin has been downloaded illegally more often than recent albums by big name artists such as Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, Twenty One Pilots, and Florence and the Machine, to name a few.
One possible way to interpret these data is that OMAM is actually more popular than can be detected from album sales alone. If so, it is of course unfortunate that this popularity is not reflected to a greater degree in album sales (where they have nevertheless been quite successful). One can only hope that the the exposure pays off for the band in other ways down the road.
As everybody knows, the music business has changed a lot in past decade or two. Most artist are no longer making much money on album sales, and have to rely on other sources of income. When you’re at this level, making albums and touring is very expensive. We know we’re preaching to the choir, because the people that follow our pages are most likely to be fans who are already doing everything they can to support the band by going to shows, streaming music through legal means (e.g., Spotify), and buying albums and merchandise. Let’s hope that the band keeps attracting more and more fans who are willing to do the same.
