The proper way to deal with Pirates, How Iron Maiden found its worst music pirates.

Everyone is pretty familiar right now with the state of the music industry and entertainment industry in regards to piracy. ITs always been my view that if the companies adapted and worked on their business model instead of fighting change they could profit.

Cispa Pippa etc, digital millennium copyright act all responses from a Dinosaur of an industry refusing to adapt.

For more than a decade, musicians have battled rampant music piracy that has put labels and record stores out of business at a rapid pace. Unlike the shift to Amazon that did in the book store chains, record stores are suffering from outright theft, and the migration to iTunes or Spotify streaming isn't making up the difference.

Between 2003 and 2009, about one-third of all independent record shops in the U.S. closed their doors, according to the Almighty Institute of Music Retail, a California-based marketing firm. That translates to 3,700 stores. The one bright spot is that the trend has slowed since 2008.

Fortunately there are still people out there willing to innovate and think about this issue intelligently.

Enter another U.K. company called Musicmetric, which specializes in analytics for the music industry by capturing everything from social media discussion to traffic on the BitTorrent network. It then offers this aggregated information to artists to decide how they want to react. Musicmetric noticed Iron Maiden's placement and ran its own analytics for the band.

Enter Musicmetric a company that focuses on social arrogate data analysis to spot trends, using this company IRON MAIDEN was able to target areas with HIGH Piracy, and do something revolutionary.

In the case of Iron Maiden, still a top-drawing band in the U.S. and Europe after thirty years, it noted a surge in traffic in South America. Also, it saw that Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Columbia, and Chile were among the top 10 countries with the most Iron Maiden Twitter followers. There was also a huge amount of BitTorrent traffic in South America, particularly in Brazil.

Rather than send in the lawyers, Maiden sent itself in. The band has focused extensively on South American tours in recent years, one of which was filmed for the documentary "Flight 666." After all, fans can't download a concert or t-shirts. The result was massive sellouts. The São Paolo show alone grossed £1.58 million (US$2.58 million) alone.

TURN Piracy into profit, locate where the pirates are, who lets be honest are FANS not criminals.

Treat your FANS for what they are, and they will support you.


How Iron Maiden used Bittorrent to sell out shows

reply to post by benrl


I certainly was not expecting what I read when I clicked on your thread Benryl!

Surprising and brilliant move by Maiden!

S&F, and Merry Christmas to you!

reply to post by benrl

S&F. Iron Maiden did the right thing. I'm in my 50's. When I was a young man, we recorded music off the radio, and played the tapes in our cars. Yet all the major bands that we listened to were still successful, and record stores still sold albums. Include me in the bunch that bought thousands of those albums. What happened? Greed! That's what happened. The music industry has gotten greedy, just like every other corporate industry.

Want people to listen to, and buy your music? Put it out there freely, don't worry about piracy, and charge reasonable prices for cd's and dvd's, and you'll make your billions, just as you always have. The tighter the industry grips, the more slips through their fingers. If they would start telling the truth about how much they are profiting already, instead of lying about their losses, we would know the whole piracy thing is mostly BS.

seeker1963
reply to post by benrl

 

I certainly was not expecting what I read when I clicked on your thread Benryl!

Surprising and brilliant move by Maiden!

S&F, and Merry Christmas to you!

Its always nice to see a band embrace their fans not prosecute them like criminals *cough* Metallica *cough*

benrl
Its always nice to see a band embrace their fans not prosecute them like criminals *cough* Metallica *cough*

You beat me to it...

reply to post by benrl


I have loved this band since the second album, I got to see them a couple times live and it was a real treat.

Bruce and the band have done alot of things for folks through the years, I'm still proud to say I love this band (in all its incarnations).

I think this is the best way to respond to piracy, give them what they really want, in contrast my brother met Metallica twice and told me what disrespectfull tool's they were to him and other fans...and thier anti piracy stance....I bet all of them boot legged thier favorite cassettes back in the day(we all did, mixed tapes was a culture too) so hogwash and bullcrapola.

cheers!

Klassified
reply to post by benrl

 

S&F. Iron Maiden did the right thing. I'm in my 50's. When I was a young man, we recorded music off the radio, and played the tapes in our cars. Yet all the major bands that we listened to were still successful, and record stores still sold albums. Include me in the bunch that bought thousands of those albums. What happened? Greed! That's what happened. The music industry has gotten greedy, just like every other corporate industry.

Want people to listen to, and buy your music? Put it out there freely, don't worry about piracy, and charge reasonable prices for cd's and dvd's, and you'll make your billions, just as you always have. The tighter the industry grips, the more slips through their fingers. If they would start telling the truth about how much they are profiting already, instead of lying about their losses, we would know the whole piracy thing is mostly BS.

It seems that many business model has become screw the customer out of as much as you can.

From Movies, Music, to Video games, all tend to view their consumers as Adversaries.

Yet when ever bands do the smart thing, and treat their Customers with respect, and do things like this, or putting their music out freely, they find the Fans repay that respect 10 fold and everyone wins.

I've gladly paid more than $50 for a ticket to see Tool perform live, twice. That's more than the cost of all their albums combined. And I'd gladly pay that again, to hear songs I could listen to for free at any time.

The song can be copied. The experience of seeing it performed live can not.

Disclaimer: I saw 'Iron Maiden' and clicked without further thought. Love those guys

Young bands coming up should take a minute and analyze these guys. They have been at it for a long time. They know the business. Instead of complaining (cough cough Lars...), they fired up the tour bus...er plane to where the market is. How simply brilliant is that? They make a mint and the fans love it.

Yes - Iron Maiden is probably my favorite band of all time. Go see their shows when they're near - it is a moving experience - everyone chanting along, with Bruce at the helm, and people of all ages. It was awesome to kids there with their parents, who I assume were fans in the 80's. They need to hit Denver again, that's for sure.

Top Maiden songs (IMO):

1. Brave New World
2. Rainmaker
3. Blood Brothers
4. The Talisman
. . . and everything else they do.

xox,
- kissy

This is amazing! I would pay anything to see Iron Maiden live , don't think they'll ever come here though! Flight 666 was an amazing documentary as well, they went to places that never saw a big band like that. Ever. Pretty sure people sold their mothers and siblings to see it .

I'll gladly pay to see my favourite bands live, buy merch, and everything. They get more money in their pockets that way because lets face it. The only ones who strike out when it comes to music piracy is the music industry itself, not the artists. Artists only see a fraction of CD sales. A minuscule fraction.

Yep the smartest thing they could do . I love youtube for the fact I can sample an album before I buy it . If I do like it I will buy it to support the artist . If we can the wife and I can sneak away to a show and buy some merchandise to show support for the band . I hate wasting money on a cd as well for only one or two good songs on it and to me that is damn near 90% of the stuff out there now.

There have been a few bands I have discovered on youtube and ordered their cd and I would go see them if by chance they ever did come this way .

By the way that set look freaking awesome lol gotta love maiden

Funny you mention this...

The last Iron concert I went to, Bruce actually told the whole areana that he encouraged us to download their music if we loved it because they were there for us. If we downloaded it, it showed that we loved them and they knew that we would STILL buy their $#!&.

That sealed it for me. In Irons 4 Life!!!

reply to post by benrl


Holy Crap - piracy is empirical evidence that shows bands where to play shows!! This is the kind of innovation we need!

Massive respect of Iron maiden, ive been a big fan for over 20 years

What this proves is that hard work = money.

One day in a studio = stolen records = very little money.

The music 'artists' these days expect 'money for nothing' to quote Dire Straits. Times change, marketing strategies change and in hard times there is no easy money.

Up the Irons!!

reply to post by benrl


As a professional musician myself... I completely agree with you brother. The industry needs to adapt. The system needs to change. Not the people.

Klassified
reply to post by benrl

 

S&F. Iron Maiden did the right thing. I'm in my 50's. When I was a young man, we recorded music off the radio, and played the tapes in our cars. Yet all the major bands that we listened to were still successful, and record stores still sold albums. Include me in the bunch that bought thousands of those albums. What happened? Greed! That's what happened. The music industry has gotten greedy, just like every other corporate industry.

Want people to listen to, and buy your music? Put it out there freely, don't worry about piracy, and charge reasonable prices for cd's and dvd's, and you'll make your billions, just as you always have. The tighter the industry grips, the more slips through their fingers. If they would start telling the truth about how much they are profiting already, instead of lying about their losses, we would know the whole piracy thing is mostly BS.

I am a huge music fan with over 1000 cds worth of music..maybe more...I own records, tapes, cds, mp3s....I have had friends send me mp3s by email to listen to a few bands...sometimes I like it sometimes I dont but when I really love a band....I buy everything by them. One example was when I first got into The Killers...buddy sent me a youtube link....I said i loved the song...he emailed me the song. I listened to it on loop for a day....by the end of the day I bought every single album they had which I think was around 3 at the time and have since bought their others and their solo projects. For people like me pirating/youtube etc would be a way to get into a band I havent heard....

Another artist was an original score composer...put out some great stuff and only asked for donations for his music...you could get it for free...but he was good man...some of the best stuff I ever heard...I paid what would be a regular price for his stuff. I think you are right about greed. Listening to the radio and recording cassette tapes only made me love a band and eventually buy the real tape.

benrl

seeker1963
reply to post by benrl

 

I certainly was not expecting what I read when I clicked on your thread Benryl!

Surprising and brilliant move by Maiden!

S&F, and Merry Christmas to you!

Its always nice to see a band embrace their fans not prosecute them like criminals *cough* Metallica *cough*

I refuse to buy ANYTHING Metallica related because of this. And I have never pirated music as far as I am aware.

benrl
It seems that many business models have become screw the customer out of as much as you can.

From Movies, Music, to Video games, all tend to view their consumers as Adversaries.

Yet when ever bands do the smart thing, and treat their Customers with respect, and do things like this, or putting their music out freely, they find the Fans repay that respect 10 fold and everyone wins.

Agreed, it's always about money. The archaic business model does not adapt and change.

This is one reason I still greatly respect Nine Inch Nails, and the way Reznor has adapted and innovated. He released at lease 2 albums full albums for free under a creative commons license. The is genius in that it invites fans and listeners to INTERACT with and engage in the art themselves. While the releases are free, there are also higher quality downloads of the same albums for purchase.NIN/CC

Mortiis also had a free EP available for download a couple of years ago. It wasn't CC but it was still FREE. Great album too.

These artists are definitely learning the modern market.

Back to the OP:

I don't see how what Iron Maiden did reduced piracy. I mean, people pirate stuff so they can listen to it. Concerts are cool and all, but you can't necessarily "take it home" and listen to it in your car or put it on your ipod, etc.

It doesn't hurt that the band gets a much bigger cut from ticket and merch sales than they do album sales. Supporting a band you love by seeing them live and buying a shirt while you're there probably nets the band more money than if you bought all their albums. Even a band with acatalog as extensive as Iron Maiden's.