Is Iron Maiden Making Money from Pirates?

Article Submitted By: Music Annex.

Iron Maiden is still touring, and they may have stumbled across a lucrative method of dealing with piracy. Rather than waste legal resources prosecuting pirates for illegal downloads, the band has tried a new strategy of playing those home countries. Iron Maiden has spent the past few years travelling the world to play shows and sell merchandise in the most unexpected places to win fans. When Iron Maiden discovered a surge of piracy traffic coming from South America, they made a point to tour the continent extensively. By the end of the tour, they had added over 5 million fans to their growing database. One show in São Paolo sold out for $2.58 million.

The band added five South American countries — including Brazil, Colombia, and Chile — to its list of the top 10 countries that have the greatest number of Twitter followers. This seems counter-intuitive by industry standards, Brazil is one of the biggest countries for illegal file-sharing, beating out both the UK and the USA.

Yet Iron Maiden LLC still ranks as one of the fastest growing companies in the UK, and they maintain an active fan base that they can say is truly profitable for them. This data seems to suggest that even though fans are willing to pirate music, those same fans will show up for a live performance. It’s worth noting that this isn’t new for Iron Maiden, who has toured South America far before bit torrent traffic was a thing, but this may be a new trend for the music industry.