Embracing the new reality. This is how bands will not only survive, but thrive. Good for them!
This is great news. Now thereâs some evidence of what many of us have always thought - pirating isnât innately harmful. Oftentimes, the pirates are also the best customers.
I pirated Maiden stuff way back when. On tape. Later, when I had a job, I bought it. Imagine that!
And yeah, the live concert is the ultimate unpirate-able experience (till we get brain replay). Sure, you can get the DVD or BD, you can fill your den with clouds of pot smoke, but it just doesnât compare to the entire stadium shaking, the screaming, and the singalongs.
As an aside, Bruce Dickinson is an awesome polymath.
Rock star, airline pilot, international fencer, novelist, entrepreneur, screenwriterâŚ
Heâs also better on his own than with Maiden, but whatever he wants to do!
Sure, not a bad strategy.
However, I fear that quite a lot of people will use this to justify pirating.
âOh, theyâll make it back when on tour.â
No⌠pirating is bad. Period.
If you canât afford the music, then you donât get the music. Simple.
Having access to free music is not a right.
Step 1: âAcquireâ large Colorado-based botnet.
Step 2: Use said botnet to pirate huge amounts of Maiden material.
Step 3: Thoroughly enjoy the 200-date 2015 Iron Maiden Tour of Colorado
Eh, you know, I pirated when it I couldnât afford the music. I specifically pirated Iron Maiden. Later on when I had money, I bought it. Listening to those worn Maiden tapes again and again ( Piece of Mind! ) is what made me a lifetime fan through their ups and downs. Black Sabbath and Deep Purple too.
I suggest you donât look at it as a ârightâ, but rather marketing for the band, which is exactly how Maiden are looking at it.
Iron Maiden, LLP
thatâs so metal
The punishment for it, however, doesnât fit the crime.
It seems like a viable response for already-established bandsâespecially for those bands who recorded music on tradititional recording contracts that were signed before pirating was a huge issue for record companiesâbut Iâm not sure how well it will translate to new and emerging talent. If recording companies arenât going to sign as many artiss to huge contracts with huge marketing budgets, production values, and widespread release, itâs going to be more difficult for bands to acquire the status that Iron Maiden enjoys. This may mean fewer big act and more small acts, fewer major-label records and more independent records supported largely by touring⌠and while this may not be bad, it would be a significant change in the way things are.
We canât play music for free over the airwaves because then why would people buy records? The radio is innately harmful to the music industry.
The Canadian version of the RIAA found that the biggest pirate-downloaders bought the most legit media content
I think the idea of this is awesome, however, I donât feel like you really need a consulting company to tell you that a band like Iron Maiden is going make a mint touring S and Central America.
You are using future tense to describe present reality for some reason. Itâs like saying cell phones would change the way we communicate and would be a significant change in the way things are.
Radio stations pay license fees in order to be able to play copyrighted songs over the air.
Iâm using future tense because there are plenty of legacy artists out there who started their career and became famous in a different, pre-internet-pirating environment. Their record labels made investments in them that record labels today might not be willing to make. You canât point to their touring success as a model for future artists when they became famous on the backs of their major-label releases.
I imagine based on their track record that Iron Maiden will sell out any venue they appear at, The advantage, I suspect, of doing it in South America is that it is significantly cheaper to tour there.
Either way, this method only really works for big artists who have already made a name for themselves and have publishers backing them willing to pay for the upfront costs of a tour like this (travel, venue, staff, publicity); an option that is really not available to smaller artists, especially those who self publish.
Whatâs a good strategy then sir?
I disagree, the scale obviously changes, but there is no reason a smaller band canât make use of similar methods; especially those that self publish and organise their own tours. If you already know that a fan base exists somewhere, then you can be reasonably sure there will be similar bands in the area. If you can contact those bands, they can help book venues, help with promotion, etc.
Besides, for many smaller bands their is very limited opportunity to actually sell records outside of your own locality, so piracy isnât so much âlost salesâ as âpeople who otherwise wouldnât even know our band existsâ. Much easier to get people in the door at shows when people know your band exists.
