It appears Bruno Mars is getting locked out of his rightful earnings…
The 28-year-old part-Puerto Rican singer has been named the musician whose work was illegally downloaded the most in 2013, according to a study prepared by Musicmetric.
The company, based in London, analyzes consumer behavior, and its report has been published in Billboard.
In the report, which is based on a study of Bit Torrent sites — collectors’ web pages that allow peer-to-peer sharing of music, video and data — Musicmetric listed 20 artists whose work had been illegally downloaded 64.5 million times in 2013. About 70 percent of the downloads were albums; 30 percent were individual tracks.
Mars music accounted for 5,783,556 of those downloads, followed closely by Rihanna (5,414,166), Daft Punk (4,212,361) and Justin Timberlake (3,930,185).
Other artists on the list include Flo Rida, Kanye West, Eminem, Jay Z, Maroon 5, Adele and Katy Perry (who holds the No. 20 position, with 2,318,740 downloads).