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Piracy Offers Heavy Metal a New Business Model
hessian writes "Despite being extensively pirated worldwide, Iron Maiden have managed to put themselves in the £10-20m for 2012. This means that despite the growing popularity of the band on social media, and the extensive and pervasive torrent downloading of the band's music, books and movies, the band is turning a profit. This is in defiance of the past business model, and the idea that piracy is killing music. In fact, piracy seems to be saving music in Iron Maiden's case. One reason for this may be metal itself. It has a fiercely loyal fanbase and a clear brand and identity. The audience identifies with the genre, which stands in contrast to genericized genres. It doggedly maintains its own identity and shuns outsiders. As a result, fans tend to identify more with their music, and place a higher value on purchasing it."
...Iron Maiden had established a strong reputation and fan base before Internet piracy became a problem.
of the record labels. Before records, musicians made money by playing in live concerts. That's what musicians should do today, and "piracy" would cease to exist, along with the vampiristic record companies: live gigs would turn a profit, and free recordings (Youtube, MP3 and others) would be like film trailers, something to draw you to the live concerts.
Famously, the Grateful Dead encouraged people to record their concerts and saw nothing wrong with that, because 1/ every gig was different, and 2/ they considered their concerts to be where the interest, and the money, was.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The audience identifies with the genre, which stands in contrast to genericized genres.
I'm pretty sure that fans of any genre of music think that their genre is special and that all the other genres are homogenous and generic. This is not something special about heavy metal. To paraphrase Tyler Durden, heavy metal is not a beautiful or unique snowflake.
I've been an Iron Maiden fan for a while. I first got into them (and a bunch of other bands) by pirating basically everything they ever made.
I have been trying lately to make up for it, usually by buying merchandise (since many bands don't get anything from CD sales). I hadn't gotten around to Iron Maiden yet, but I'm looking at their store now and their merch prices seem extremely low given how huge of a band they are. Normally big-name bands charge like $50, sometimes even $100 for a simple t-shirt, but they're charging £10 to £15, which should come out to $20-25, not much more expensive than any printed t-shirt. Definitely buying some of them.
I do have to wonder who the hell is buying "The Trooper" golf balls, though.
That's how they make money
I doubt they care if anyone pirates their music since it sells concert tickets in huge soccer and Olympic stadiums
And they probably have enough money to finance their tours themselves instead of relying on loan from record companies and livenation
It's been well understood in the music business for decades that different genres have different business models, and metal's has always been to use album sales as a way to promote concert attendance. It was rockers who first began giving performances in sports stadiums, because the nature of the music is quite amenable to being played over low-fidelity sound systems, especially because the sheer energy of a big crowd all rocking out far more than offsets any loss in audio quality. And even as stadium rock died out, hard rock and heavy metal bands still made the majority of their money by touring... concert tickets and merchandise, especially t-shirts.
So, while I think it's awesome that Maiden is continuing to make good money doing their thing (I'm a fan, though not hardcore), and that the Internet is even helping them execute their old business model with even greater efficiency, by allowing them to track their fan base through bittorrent statistics, it's not a new model at all. And I think there's a good argument to be made that it's a model that won't work as well for other genres, especially pop and other more "casual" genres. Which may not be such a big loss.
Snark aside, I have no doubt that pop stars will continue to be able to rake in big bucks even if the current model of selling copies of music vanishes entirely. Whether they get paid for touring, or for shilling products, or whatever else, if they can achieve widespread fame through their music, then there will be a way for them to make a living. IMO, the Internet makes the first part of that equation -- achieving widespread notoriety -- much easier. I look at some of my favorite YouTube acts, Lindsey Stirling and The Piano Guys, and I think the success they're achieving would have been impossible pre-Internet, and they've done it by essentially giving their music away for free in a model that's partially ad-supported, but mostly just about building notoriety which they can then exploit in other ways (currently, by selling albums, but other models of exploiting fame would work as well).
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So, bands that have halfway decent music, that produce new material, that go out on tour, and that have a loyal fan-base actually MAKE money long term compared to bands that perform artificial commercialized crap that is shoved down teenagers' throats by the likes of Disney et al, who only make money while the commercial spots are running?
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the majority of their money touring? Last I heard unless you made it through your first few record deals with your popularity intact and could re-negotiate you weren't making anything on record sales. Heck, at times you were paying the studio to sell your records in the form of loan interest.
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We've all seen the pie chart showing just what a tiny fraction of the pie the artist receives for a sold recording owned by a record company. Iron Maiden is losing so little it's unnoticeable. Far better for them to have their fans pirate the recordings they don't own, leaving more available disposable income for spending on things of which the band gets a much better cut, like their merchandise and concert tickets. Basic economics.
And yes, despite the herpaderp sarcasm of the anonymous coward at the bottom of the comments, it really is acting as free advertising, exposing an entirely new generation of potential customers to their music. Cory Doctorow was right: “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.” Eric Flint echoed the sentiment when the Baen Free Library was established. Then he proved it with sales numbers.
Holding a gun to people's heads and demanding money does not make you liked. It makes you hated. People prefer to spend money on what they like. Finding what they like is tough, and getting tougher every year as the amount of entertainment material in the world explodes even faster than world population. So yeah, free downloads work. This is only a surprise to the MAFIAA and their persistent shills on Slashdot.
this is so important but limiting the conversation to "hardcore" fans of any genre basically wipes out any progress we could make by applying this truth
it's not just metalheads, punks, rap fans, indie rock, EDM....or name the sub-genre...it's **anyone who loves music**
the industry makes a distinction between *active* and *passive* listeners....
*passive* listeners just want some white noise basically...they'll listen to whatever their peers listen to...they may have "opinions" when asked about what they like, but **in action** they really don't care
*active* listeners *know what they like* and *seek it out*....they have opinions based on action rather than social perception...they like what they like not b/c it makes them 'cool' but because they genuinely like the music
active listeners, music lovers of all kinds, and yes fuckin' metalheads....we **all** will **pay for music** from **artists we respect**
EVEN THOUGH IT IS AVAILABLE FOR FREE
this fact of altruism could ruin everthing the RIAA does in one fell swoop if we just all could rally behind the fact that **all music lovers will contribute to artists they love**
Thank you Dave Raggett
Number of the Beast, Live After Death, and the Best of the Beast complication album.
I like hearing how a band sounds live in judging how good a band is. I've only seen a handful of live shows, been impressed with some, not so much with others, and sometimes live show albums aren't so good, like AC/DC's from 1992, where they couldn't even get the bell for Hell's Bells timed right. Maiden's was pretty good, Dickinson hit most of the notes that he hits in the studio cuts but it's imperfect enough that it's obvious he's not lip-synching.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
whats the deal here?
my point was about how music lovers will always want to compensate **artists**...you get that right?
buying an album new from a chain store is a horrible way to do that...the best thing is to buy straight from the Artist...attending live shows helps...wearing a tshirt...telling friends...all of these count
are you saying you won't do ***any of those things*** for the artist you like?
Thank you Dave Raggett
I used to feel that way, but Autotune and the excessive amount of post-production that one sees in most charting music changed my mind. It's one thing to multitrack-record to combine the best takes, it's entirely another to almost synthesize the voice yet still attribute the performance to a singer as opposed to a machine or a sound engineer.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Madonna ain't "generic" at all. Furthermore, I perceive her as a trendsetter rather than "one size fits all". On top of that, her songs are recognizable years, maybe decades after being released. In case of a generic band, you struggle to remember who the hell was singing that song not one year after it was released.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I don't think ol' Rob ever had hair, and he's metal as fuck!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I asked bruce about this when I had an opportunity to meet him. He said his voice wasn't what it used to be and he has to mix up their set list each night and can only do one or two songs that really push his range. I saw them on the on last incarnation of the 7th son tour and he avoided "only the good die young" in order to do "moonchild" but apparently that changes in each town.