There have been trillions of discussions already about the pros & cons of piracy, but here is one fact that makes you feel better (even if it doesn’t actually make you better):
You just heard that new song on the radio when you were driving home from work and now you can’t get it out of your head. First thing at home, you sit down and download it from one of the endless list of sources (usenet, kazaa, limewire, bittorrent, etc.) that are available. Cool, this is the perfect summer hit!
At the other side of the world (or somewhere else, depends where you live) the big boss at the big recording studio wonders how well that song is selling, so he goes downstairs to the sales department: “How is Big Titties selling at the east coast?” he asks. “East coast is not that big, sir, but it’s handled hot in cali at the moment” replies the sales monkey.
Big boss is pissed, he needs that new Lear jet for the trip to Paris and the band needs a new amplifier as well, so he needs to sell! Back in his office, where noone can listen, big boss speed dials no. 1 on his mobile and calls the guys at Big Champagne: “Hey Joe, how good is Big Titties being pirated at the east coast right now, not so well, huh?” he feverishly asks. Joe checks in his real-time updated database and replies “Big Titties was slow on the east coast the last 3 days, but it seems to be sky rocketing today!”. Damn, that info was not cheap, but champagne isn’t available for free either.
So big boss calls his Radio contacts at the east coast and yells: “You retards need to put Big Titties on high rotation, starting as of now, everybody at the fricking east coast is downloading it, so east coast people seem to like it, so air it for fucks sake or i shut down your station because of blah!”.
Great that big boss can ask Joe. But how does Joe know? His company Big Champagne monitors all P2P downloads and gather all data with the locations from where in the world it was downloaded in one big database. I don’t know how it is possible, but it is, and all major studios use this kind of information.
Hope you feel better now. If you liked this story, go out and buy a CD or something.
