"The Resurgence of Music Piracy: YouTube's Role in the Comeback"
Music piracy is on the rise again, with over 17 billion visits to piracy websites in 2023, a 13% increase from the previous year. The resurgence is attributed to factors such as affordability of music streaming services and high mobile data costs. Surprisingly, 40% of music piracy is from sites that rip audio from YouTube videos. Despite efforts from YouTube to combat piracy, the issue persists. Torrenting remains a significant method of music piracy, with popular artist Taylor Swift's albums being torrented hundreds of thousands of times. This resurgence in music piracy poses a challenge for the music industry despite the availability of numerous legal music acquisition options.