site.btaBulgarian Association of Music Producers Reports over 135 Mln Visits to Pirate Websites in 2023

The Bulgarian Association of Music Producers (BAMP) reports over 135 million visits to pirate websites from Bulgaria for the purpose of unlicensed use of music in 2023, BAMP said on Thursday. The figures are part of a study conducted by the organization.

The study shows that music piracy has not disappeared along with the decline of counterfeit CD sales, but it has become a much more invisible and hard-to-identify online threat. The trend of a steady increase in music piracy in Bulgaria now appears to be stagnating and even showing signs of a marginal decline compared to 2022, when some 150 million visits to pirate websites were registered. This is likely due to a variety of reasons, one of which are the increasing options offered by digital streaming platforms to legally access the entire global and domestic music catalogue, including through free versions and premium subscriptions, BAMP said.

Unlike the recent global trend to use unlicensed content via stream-ripping sites, in Bulgaria such content is mainly available via torrent sites.

In 2023, the number of visits to pirate websites in Bulgaria (135 million visits), represents 0.8% of the total 17 billion visits to pirate websites globally. Given the fact that Bulgaria's population represents only 0.075% of the global population, measures are needed to strengthen the legal framework and introduce legislation to block access to pirate websites, as well as urgently adapt national legislation to implement the EU's Digital Services Act, BAMP warned.