No one who bought the Stone Roses’ debut single in 1985 would have ever bet on 5,000 Chilean fans being able to download their records via a thing called the internet.
But despite not having released a new record since the internet came into people’s homes, the Stones Roses boast 923,000 online fans, including 58,000 Twitter followers.
Statistics from Musicmetric, the global music analysts, show the Manchester rockers light years behind the likes of Coldplay who have around 35 times as many digital fans - over 34.5 million.
Prog-rockers Muse, who this week unveiled their bombastic new Olympic tune ‘Survival’ 18.7 have just over half as man as Coldplay with 18.6 million digital fans.
Still, Ian Brown can take some solace in the fact that Liam Gallagher, the heir to his throne, has just 466,000 online fans for his current group Beady Eye, who have been supporting the Roses at this weekend’s Manchester shows at Heaton Park.
Of course the internet has helped fans access the Stone Roses’ music, and data from Musicmetric shows huge communities of file-sharers right across the globe.
The firm – based in London and Los Angeles - works with record labels and bands to help them understand their fans and get more out of the digital space. By knowing what drives interest, labels are able to maximize their income at a time where physical sales continue to plummet.
While the UK leads the pack (with 194,545 file-sharers), the band could extend their comeback tour to some exotic locations such as: Brazil (12,860), South Korea (7,620), Japan (7,115) and Israel (7,032), or Russia (4,314), the Philippines (4,135), Indonesia (3,555) and Colombia (3,150).
Musicmetric’s global analysis teams tracks torrents around the globe while monitoring every major social media outlet.
