Illegal music sharing have always been touted by record companies out there as an evil deed that crushes the music industry. Well, one band seems to look at it in a different way though and it is not just any random band – it’s the legendary metal band, the Iron Maiden.
According to the UK-based MusicMetric, their stats showed that Iron Maiden have plenty of BitTorrent traffic in South America. Instead of sending lawyers to hunt down the pirates in that region, Iron Maiden continues to have huge concerts throughout the region as part of their world tour since 2009.
Throughout those concerts, Iron Maiden able to earn legal sales directly from fans through concert tickets and merchandises sales. For example, one of the band’s recent show in Sao Paolo alone has managed to rake in around GBP 1.58 million (RM 8.53 million). At an era where CDs are getting ignored as time goes by, this seems like a sound business plan after all.
However, this doesn’t mean you should go all-pirate to build your music collection though. Do choose legal purchases whenever possible especially when it comes to your favourite artists and local independent musicians. At the very least, you are also able to support them via affordable streaming music services such as Deezer and Spotify in addition to rocking out at their concerts and purchase their merchandises.
[Source: CITEworld via TorrentFreak. Image: adels @ Flickr, used under Creative Commons license]
