May 4, 2008

Mininova Heads Towards 5 Billion Downloads

Duncan Riley

24 comments »

mininova.jpg

The Pirate Bay may get all the headlines, but BitTorrent directory Mininova continues to grow. Stats from the site above (some are public, some via a non-published link) show the site is quickly racing towards 5 billion downloads after having only passed 4 billion February 18.

On comparison, Mininova comes out ahead on traffic. The Pirate Bay doesn’t offer a download figure, only concurrent users, with the site having passed the 10 million user mark in January. Both Alexa and comScore rank Mininova in front of The Pirate Bay, Alexa ranks The Pirate Bay at 101 to Minivova’s 52. comScore records over 30 million monthly page views for Mininova to Pirate Bay’s 24 million.

The break down of what is being downloaded is interesting. Video (movies and TV) make up 60% of the downloads on Mininova vs 19.55% for music. TV Shows are the most popular category at 38.7%; if we presume the music industry is broken based on illegal downloading, wouldn’t the demand for TV shows also demonstrate that the TV business is in trouble as well, even as services like Hulu try to offer a legal alternative?

One thing that can be taken away from these stats: that BitTorrent isn’t going away, its general usage and acceptance in the community is accelerating despite attempts by the RIAA and others to harass users.

(thanks to Ashley Smith for the tip)

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  1. 113.com

    Interesting Europe… :-)

  2. Adam Hyman

    Nice post. Please post more stuff about the bit torrent.

    Much appreciated.

    Thanks.

  3. Johnny P

    Can you guys, please, um.. NOT write about mininova!!

  4. Duncan Riley

    Johnny P
    why? first time we’ve ever written a dedicated post about them.

  5. M Marius

    wwwow … is good to hear that!

  6. M Marius

    We don’t talk about…

  7. Dr. Bardou

    It’s like a “Highlander” - There will be only one. :)
    Really, who will be the winner of this competition?

  8. Steven

    Demonoid is where it’s all at as far as Torrents are concerned

  9. Brian

    Can any one tell me if these bittorrent sites are actually legal??? i never quite understood…

    bookmarked @ http://livbit.com

  10. No

    “attempts by the RIAA and others to harass users.”

    Do you want to explain what you mean by harassing? Trying to stop copyright infringement (which is illegal) is far from harassment. Unless of course this is a biased and uninformed blog post.

  11. Adam Hyman

    @9

    Wow Brian, you put livbit.com as your website, a site that allows people to “share content”, and you don’t know the basics about bittorrent? wow.

  12. Johnny

    @10

    Of course. Most of Duncan’s posts are drivel. God forbid you try to steal a CD from Walmart only to find that Walmart security will harass you.

  13. David

    Duncan, not sure what domain you were looking at for The Pirate Bay, but you can see an accurate Alexa ranking for “thepiratebay.org”:

    http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....ize=Medium

  14. David

    OK, now that the post has been updated, my comment no longer makes sense : )

  15. JASON JENKINS LIVE!

    ABSTRACT10.COM LOVES P2P!! WE WILL GLADLY SHARE OUR LIBRARY OF CONTENT ON THESE SITES.

  16. bob cobb

    and a lot of people dont even use public torrent sites. Private sites are MUCH safer, and usually give you much better speeds

  17. Duncan Riley

    David
    my fault originally, I typed in piratebay.org instead of thepiratebay.org on the original stats. Both work when you visit the site, but obviously not for stats tracking :-)

  18. How low will they go

    Wouldn’t it make more sense to put sponsored or ad-built in tv show files up with high speed server torrents for free? Going to Hulu.com is stupid. I can’t put Hulu.com on my iPhone and $1.99/episode is even dumber.

  19. YM Ousley

    Hulu will be fine, especially once they work out international distribution. Streaming is still more immediate than downloading a torrent, and I think most users will sit through a few ads to save disk space and hassle.

  20. 9ice

    Hulu will not be fine. Bittorrent has gotten into people’s blood. Furthermore, people dont pay for TV shows in the first place. Why will they pay hulu?

  21. Owen Byrne

    @20 - A lot of people pay for TV - on DVD. And I think that’s a reasonable basis for comparison because TV DVDs offer the closest alternative to torrent sites for most people (especially outside the US). Supporting easy access to past full seasons is the key, because it allows me to pick up on any show based on a friend’s recommendation, something I read, etc.

  22. sun

    Mininova is easy to use as far as torrent sites go. I think they’ll go a long way towards introducing new people to the concept of torrents. As long as TPB can keep their tracker up, it looks good!

    > A lot of people pay for TV - on DVD

    Yeah, I don’t know why distribution companies don’t work with Netflix to get their content out there. More eyeballs = more fees they collect from advertisers. Distribution companies could also insert DVDs inside newspapers. Rupert Murdoch, you listening?!

    Embedded advertisement and product placement seems like the likely method for advertisement delivery. Viewers want to skip ads. You have ad blockers for web pages and any ripped content cuts out advertisement. It’d be much more difficult to cut out advertisement if it was embedded within the content.

  23. Ashley Smith

    I think the biggest problem with TV Shows is that a lot of countries don’t even get to see them, so the only way is to download. I’m quite positive that if the shows were aired via the net with advertisements users would watch them instead of downloads, non tech savy people any how.

  24. makoy

    GO PIRATES!

    cheers! =)

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