15% of UK adults regularly use stream-ripping sites to acquire their music.

Stream-ripping is now the “most aggressive” and “fastest-growing” form of music piracy, according to research carried out by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and PRS For Music.

15% of UK adults frequent sites that allow users to illegally turn Spotify songs, YouTube videos and other streaming content into permanent files that are then available to store on their devices. 33% of these users are aged 16-34.

Between 2014 and 2016, overall usage of stream-ripping sites increased 141.3%, with YouTube the go-to source of content for these sites.

A number of the world’s biggest record labels have already begun clamping down on illegal YouTube ripping sites. Last September, Universal, Sony, Capitol Records, Atlantic, Warner Bros and others took out a landmark £35m lawsuit against the owner of German-based site YouTube-mp3.org.

Read next: Why secret album-sharing forum What.CD was a music obsessive’s pirate paradise

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