The group's popularity, however, makes Iron Maiden a big target for illegal downloading, which has affected countless artists and the music industry as a whole. Where U.S. metal heroes Metallica infamously tangled with then-upstart file-sharing service Napster back in the year 2000, Iron Maiden have found a way to follow their most fervent downloading fans and turn them into paying customers.

According to CiteWorld, Iron Maiden utilized data generated by UK analytic company Musicmetric, which analyzes everything from social media activity to BitTorrent traffic, showing which countries and cities were most actively talking about (and illegally downloading) all things Iron Maiden.