Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson: 'The music industry exploited its customers'

The Iron Maiden singer was a keynote speaker at the VTEX Day 2018 in São Paulo, Brazil, where he discussed his various ventures as a pilot, entrepreneur, author, broadcaster and bona fide rock legend.

In an interview with GloboNews to promote the appearance, Bruce was asked about the current state of the music industry and the singer suggested it didn’t change fast enough to deal with the rise of digital downloading.

"The music industry exploited its customers,” Bruce explained. “The record companies were making a lot of money for not doing very much.

“They believed the downloading would just disappear. But it didn't, and they didn't do anything about it. They didn't see downloading as being a great way to access their fans, their customers, if you like. But bands did; the bands were way ahead of the record companies.”

Bruce continued: "Brazil, for example, had one of the youngest audiences of any country in the world and consequently they had a huge uptake on Internet activity.

“So, for a band like Iron Maiden, who, we embraced the Internet very early on, we were making contact with people in Brazil directly. And that was great for us. But the record companies failed to understand that because they were too arrogant, they were too old, they were too slow."

Elsewhere in the chat, Bruce said the idea for Iron Maiden’s Trooper Beer came about after he was approached about making an Iron Maiden wine.

"Somebody came to us with the idea for an Iron Maiden red wine,” Bruce said. “I was like, 'that's weird'. I mean, I drink red wine but it doesn't feel to me like it's the identity of who we are. And I said, 'well, why don't we do a beer'.

“Twenty million pints later, we’re five years old now. So, it's a really successful international beer, we are a real, proper beer brand. I'm so proud of that, you know, because it's really good beer."

Bruce also said it was a careful balancing act when using the Iron Maiden brand: "You can have fun with being a brand. Nothing bad about being a brand... the only bad thing about being a brand is when people try and exploit it in a way that is not with any integrity.

“You can do great things with a brand. For example, because we’re Iron Maiden, we can do a pinball table. I’ve wanted for years, I’ve been trying to get an Iron Maiden pirate Playmobil ship, like lego type stuff.”

He added: “It’s not like we’re short of money or anything else like that, we don’t need to do terrible things with our brand.

“We want to do nice things that have integrity and are fun. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to buy the Iron Maiden t-shirt, the music is the most important thing. Everything else comes around that.”

Iron Maiden kick off the European leg of their Legacy of the Beast World Tour at the Saku Arena in Tallinn, Estonia on Saturday night (26th May) and they recently confirmed they have finalised the setlist for the tour.

They play UK shows in Newcastle, Belfast, Aberdeen, Manchester, Birmingham and London later in the summer.