Torrents remain a very strong and relevant part of illicit access to content, despite the rise of alternative low-cost legal methods for accessing material, and the proliferation of streaming locker sites and associated link aggregators. According to Ampere consumer research, torrents remain amongst the most popular ways of accessing content online.

Assessing demand for movies via a sample set of torrent sites reveals that Action, Adventure and Thriller titles were the most popular in 2015, with movies such as Terminator Genisys, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, and Avengers: Age of Ultron amongst the most downloaded movie torrents. Animation witnessed significant demand, with Disney's Frozen one of the most widely accessed titles. In fact, relative to the number of torrents available, Animation titles were hugely accessed, at over twice the average number of downloads per torrent. Similarly, SciFi, Action and Adventure titles were also downloaded heavily, both in absolute terms as well as in relation to the overall numbers of torrents available. Genres less frequently requested included Drama, which represented 14% of all torrents uploaded in 2014, but only 8% of the downloads and Romance titles, which represented 4% of uploads, but only 1.6% of downloads.

Much of the demand for different genres can be explained through two factors - the demography of consumers engaging in torrenting (over 60% under 35 and 60% male) and the themes of the major theatrical and home entertainment hits - heavily represented amongst the most demanded torrents.