September 18, 2012 9.00 am This story is over 138 months old

The most pirated artist in Lincoln is Ed Sheeran

Music sharing: Study shows the most pirated artist in Lincoln is English singer Ed Sheeran.

New data collected by monitoring firm Musicmetric indicates the most pirated artist in Lincoln is English singer Ed Sheeran.

The research into illegal downloads shows Ed Sheeran’s songs are shared on average 172 times per month in Lincoln.

Ed Sheeran topped the list for the most pirated Lincolnshire and UK artists in the first six months of 2012.

People in the city also shared songs by American rapper Pitbull a lot compared to the UK average, according to the study.

Musicmetric found the highest levels of piracy based on downloads per person in the UK were recorded in Manchester, Nottingham and Southampton.

The largest overall volume of pirated music was predictably from London, followed by Birmingham. Lincoln is not present in the top 20.

With 40 million albums and singles illegally shared in the first half of 2012, the UK is number two in the worldwide piracy list, topped by the US.

Rihanna’s Talk That Talk album was found to be the world’s most pirated record with 1.2 million illegal downloads.

Musicmetric obtained the results by monitoring the global activity of BitTorrent files via peer-to-peer downloads.

BBC News, which had early access to the data, created an interactive feature where you can check who is the most illegally shared artist near you.

Main photo: Ed Sheeran Music via Facebook