Hmmm, if you have not visited thepiratebay then it is either because you are not aware of it or it is not accessible for you. Here is a quick stat for you from that site.
| Music | Size | Seed | Peer |
| Daft Punk – Random Access Memories [MP3 192] | 101.64 MiB | 3799 | 76 |
| Billy Van Dubstep Media Bundle | 43.58 MiB | 2781 | 4 |
| Robin Thicke Feat T.I. And Pharrell – Blurred Lines {2013-Single | 10.08 MiB | 2763 | 48 |
| Justin TImberlake – The 20/20 Experience (Deluxe Edition) 2013 P | 184.4 MiB | 2636 | 208 |
| Daft Punk – Random Access Memories (JP Deluxe Edition) 2013 320k | 181.45 MiB | 2627 | 150 |
| Gods Robots (wav) BitTorrent Edition | 215.69 MiB | 2553 | 3 |
| Drive A – The World In Shambles – BitTorrent Edition | 44.6 MiB | 2459 | 15 |
| VA-The Great Gatsby SoundTrack[Deluxe Edition](2013) | 185.23 MiB | 2291 | 176 |
| Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – Thrift Shop (feat. Wanz) [Single – | 9.13 MiB | 2239 | 21 |
| Bruno Mars – Unorthodox Jukebox (iTunes Deluxe Version) 2012 320 | 173.74 MiB | 2009 | 276 |
| Django Unchained (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (iTunes Ve | 142.02 MiB | 1954 | 100 |
| Daft Punk – Random Access Memories {2013-Album} | 171.27 MiB | 1769 | 44 |
| Rihanna – Diamonds {2012-Single} | 8.66 MiB | 1725 | 8 |
| VA – Fast And Furious 6 (Original Soundtrack) 2013 OST 320kbps C | 117.14 MiB | 1690 | 154 |
| Drake – Started From the Bottom (Explicit) {2013-Single} | 6.67 MiB | 1604 | 12 |
| ASAP Rocky Long Live ASAP (Deluxe) – 2013 | 84.49 MiB | 1559 | 57 |
| ChesterFrench-BitTorrent | 35.82 MiB | 1546 | 5 |
| The Official UK Top 40 Singles Chart 02-06-2013 | 369.04 MiB | 1527 | 278 |
| Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – The Heist (Deluxe Edition) [Album | 193.05 MiB | 1518 | 141 |
| Imagine Dragons – Night Visions [Album – 2012] | 119.31 MiB | 1463 | 151 |
| Daft Punk – Random Access Memories [2013] 320 | 171.45 MiB | 1409 | 36 |
| Icona Pop – I Love It {2012-Single} | 5.97 MiB | 1388 | 13 |
| PSY – Gangnam Style (강남스타일) [Single – 2012] | 8.53 MiB | 1366 | 5 |
| Daft Punk – Random Access Memories (2013) – 320kbps | 180.78 MiB | 1360 | 32 |
| Frank Ocean – channel ORANGE (Explicit Version) [2012-Album][SW] | 130.15 MiB | 1342 | 85 |
These are top 25 torrents only, which you can freely download and play without spending a single damned penny. There are hundreds of thousands of tracks waiting there to be downloaded. See the number of people who has downloaded those. Also remember, out of 30 downloaders, 1 people seed which means a hundred thousand downloads are already done for most of these tracks. Then there are thousands of these torrent sharing websites. It will be a very conservative estimate to say at least 1 million people have downloaded these music albums from torrent sharing alone.
And then there are those big names, Google Music and Apple Music. These brands are so big that neither they need any publicity nor any effort to make their music streaming systems become a habit for their own ecosystem users. They have the user base, the financial strength, the proven brand identity and R&D to take care of every need of music streaming even if not making any profit.
And again, there are those music streaming companies who are coming up with fresh ideas and even more fresh hopes of making it big and changing the scenario. How many names you want?
You must have heard of (and used perhaps) Pandora and Spotify. Then there is StereoMood, Rdio, GrooveShark, Twitter Music, 22Tracks, Whyd, 25mostplayed and God knows how many more.
But the eminent threat to the third type are the first two types. Either you dont want to spend data in streaming music (or have a flaky connection or capped data) or you use Google Music or Apple Music which comes as default widgets with your smart device. Why would you even go to 25mostplayed.com to listen to music? Even more dangerous question for the CEO & owners of these start ups, how will a person wil even come to know of your service?
The financial side is scarier for these start ups. None of these companies have been able to make a profit as reported by Jill Kransky here. Not only small companies, but even the big names of small start ups, like Pandora and Spotify failed to register a profit due to the high licensing fee they needed to pay to the royality holders. When you need to pay 70% of total profit to licensing fees, good luck with your business. None has been able to break this jinx till date.
Here again, look how the big brands triumph. Apple got a big discount by negotiating directly with the music labels which no start up can think of achieving. Nor can these companies can go on indefinitely, waiting for a magic stone to help them reach the break-even.
Overall, these companies have one route, to get acquired by big names. Not only this is the reality but many companies are opening up with the hope of getting acquired by a big company. There is a new trend of setting up a prospectful business and then sell it to a big name. This is adding to the existing all engrossing echosystem of these big names but this is the easy way out. And this is what is happening all over the places.