hey’re going to places where they get pirated the most…
Here’s a unique take on piracy. While most musical acts and labels look at illegal internet downloading as a detriment, Iron Maiden has figured out how to profit from it. CiteWorld reports that the metal band is teamiung up with Musicmetric, a data analysis company, to figure out which locations are pirating their music most often. The trick? Those are the places they plan to tour.
The band found while partnering with Musicmetric that in addition to the UK and US, there was a lot of piracy that occurred in South America. They also used Twitter to determine that they had a lot of fans there. In response, the band has been focusing a lot of their touring in South America over the last few years and has seen heavy ticket sales increases.
Musicmetric CEO/Co-founder Gregory Mead said, “If you know what drives engagement, you can maximize the value of your fan base. Artists could say ‘we’re getting pirated here, let’s do something about it’, or ‘we’re popular here, let’s play a show’…If you engage with fans, there is a chance to turn a percentage into paying customers. You can see that through various bands using the BitTorrent network in a legal way to share content.”