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We’re No. 1! U.S. Tops Illegal Downloads List, Drake Is Most Pirated Artist

Drake / Photo by Getty Images

Pound your chest in pride, ‘Muricans! The U.S. has topped the list of the 20 most prolific file-sharing countries, with 96.6 million illegal downloads moved via peer-to-peer client BitTorrent in the first half of 2012, according to a report by music trend aggregator Musicmetric and published by the BBC. Americans downloaded nearly twice the amount of music shared by the next three ranking countries combined: the United Kingdom (43.3 million downloads), Italy (33.2 million) and Canada (just under 24 million).

#YOLO, indeed: Drake’s single “The Motto” was stolen the most, driving 458,038 downloads during the six-month period tracked, making the Canadian rapper the most illegally shared artist in the United States. Kanye West and Jay-Z beat out Canada’s native son for most pirated media in that country, with Watch the Throne downloaded 71,132 times. Folk singer and Ron Weasley stand-in Ed Sheeran is the most pirated artist in the U.K., with his 2011 album, +, reported as the most popular torrent in 460 towns and cities across the nation.

Rihanna, unsurprisingly, is the most illegally downloaded artist over all. Her Platinum-certified sixth studio album Talk That Talk was swapped 1,228,313 times worldwide. #Cake.