Record labels are using data gleaned from pirate P2P networks to refine their sales-strategies, to excelletn effect. Nevertheless, they still repudiate the networks themselves, and vow to go on individually suing every participating music fan until they have all learned to respect the music industry.
The online data revealed that despite Story of the Year's lunar rotation, its single "Until the Day I Die" ranked among the top 20 most popular downloads, alongside tracks from Blink-182, Audioslave and Hoobastank that received significantly more airplay. And when the band performed in a city, "we didn't necessarily see the phones blowing up at radio, but we saw download requests for the song skyrocket as they went through," said Jeremy Welt, Maverick's head of new media.
Armed with this data, Maverick fought for more airtime at radio, which translated into more CD sales. Story of the Year's album, "Page Avenue," just went gold, selling more than half a million copies.
"I definitely don't like to spin it that piracy is OK because we get to look at the data. It's too bad that people are stealing so much music," said Welt. "That said, we would be very foolish if we didn't look and pay attention to what's going on."
(via Copyfight)
