![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/paice3.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/airey3.jpg)
Where are we from?
Deep Purple fans are a varied bunch. We come in all colours, shapes, forms and ages. We come to our site from all corners of the world. In the course of this year, no country spared interest in The Highway Star — from United States to Saint Vincent & Grenadines (ever heard of the latter? me neither).
Our server collects extensive statistics and we decided to take a look at what countries are in the lead. Not surprisingly, United States came at #1 (due to it’s sheer size), followed by Germany, UK, Italy and Canada. A much more interesting picture, however, emerged when we normalized the figures to the number of Internet users in each country (which varies wildly between 5% and 80% of the total population). We’ve cut off countries with less than 10,000 page views in the whole year, which left us with 51 remaining (plus grand total for the whole world).
Like any statistics, this should be taken with a grain of salt. Numbers for the Internet usage are rough estimates, particularly for less developed countries, and are very unreliable. Besides, ranking produced in such a way reflects not only the band’s popularity in a particular country, but also how widespread and well understood is English language, how often the people are willing to go on the ‘net for information and what is our “competition” in a particular country.
Having said all that, it looks like Finland is in a position to lay a very strong claim for the title of the HighwayStarest country of them all. 😉
And here are the results:
[TABLE=8]
Thanks to AWStats, GeoIP, and Internet World Stats.
Hyvää uuttavuotta to our friends from Suomi and Happy New Year to everybody!
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
[…] Where are we from? Deep Purple fans are a varied bunch. We come in all colours, shapes, forms and ages. We come to our site from all corners of the world. In the course of this year, no country spared interest in The Highway Star — from United States to … […]
December 29th, 2007 at 17:58Scandinavia rules.. as allways….
December 29th, 2007 at 20:37And yes you could discuss whether Finland is part of scandinavia… well they are, for me anyway…
December 29th, 2007 at 20:40I think you must add at least 1 000 views per day from Georgia, Tbilisi 😀
December 29th, 2007 at 21:22I view ths.com for 1 000 times per day :)) I’m from Tbilisi and ver bad, that my country isn’t in this statistic table.
actually, DP WAS and IS the most popular rock-band in my country. as many my friends say, DP wad and is however male-ish band. not at all girlish, as Led Zeppelin for example.
DP really is male-ish band
Suomi Finland Perkele…sorry, but that sums it up
pretty good 🙂
Cheers to every one of you Purple-people, whatever the country you’re from.
(I’m drunk, so please excuse me…)
December 29th, 2007 at 22:06I am wandering which of all those countries have already been visited by the band… Cheers from Brazil to all Purplemaniacs ´round the world!!! Wish a happy (and Purple) 2008 to you all!!!
December 29th, 2007 at 23:09Great idea, Fernando. I have here a spreadsheet with all their concerts. I’ll cross both tables and send it to THS tomorrow.
December 30th, 2007 at 00:01George:
Georgia is in 58th place with just over 6,800 views for the whole year. there are a lot (close to 200) of countries and territories that are not included in the table because they scored less than 10,000 views. in statistics, there is a margin of error which tends to get amplified when dealing with relatively small numbers. that’s why these countries had to be excluded.
Fernando & Marcelo:
December 30th, 2007 at 01:05yes, the band touring in a particular country draws a lot of traffic to our site. it would be interesting to cross reference it with the number of gigs members of the Purple family played in a country in the course of 2007. i just didn’t have time to do that. if you’re interested to play with it, i can get raw data available.
Yes, scandinavia rules mainly finland, in this years the metal from that lands go ahead in the tendencies, and the inspiration from DP for that is obvious: Nightwish, Sonata arctica, Stratovarius, Sentenced, HIM, Apocalyptica. and others like therion, tristania, beseech, trail of tears etc… I believe DP must see for scandinavia and change for a “european (scandinavian) music”.
December 30th, 2007 at 02:05Clearly Argentina rules in latinoamerica, is obvious the gauchos are Deepurpelianos. I´m sorry for México where I’am.
Once again, the data show how pathetic the American performance is–a far cry from the old days when Deep Purple was the biggest act around and more people knew the words to “Smoke on the Water” than “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The Scandinavian performance does not surprise me. Purple always has had a strong following there, and the Scandinavians have produced their share of metal guitarists.
I figured France would be higher, but this is just raw data and not necessarily indicative of anything.
Did not México have the distinct honor of being the debut of Steve Morse in Deep Purple? I’m sure they chose it for a reason. “Deepurpelianos”… ¡Me gusta esa palabra!
December 30th, 2007 at 02:56It is interesting how there are so many more internet users here in America, although China isnt incredibly far off compared to many other countries. Almost 213,000 is like just over only like 2/3 of our contries population. But for some reason, we don’t have as many page views then many others. I’m surprised Frace wasn’t higher than it is because they’ve gotten spoiled with the amount of touring by DP there in the past couple years.
…Lets hope for a long US tour for next year! Hopefully, management will listen.
…plus a new CD for next year:D
Happy 2008
December 30th, 2007 at 06:14Not surprised that Finland is top. DP’s new albums charts always high here and they always sell out rather large hockey arena when they play here.
Saatana Perkele indeed.
December 30th, 2007 at 07:54Nick Soveiko
actually, the 58-th place from 200 country isn’t bad resultat. Consider that In Georgia lives 4 000 000 people and only 13% has internet.
thanks for the information 🙂
December 30th, 2007 at 09:06So, mr. Nick Soveiko, maybe it will be good idea if you post another statistics of ths.com. for example:
1. The most viewable news 2007
2. The most commented news 2007
3. The most viewable photo 2007
or so… you can thins of another nominations 🙂 we’re really interested in such kinds of statistic.
TheHighwayStar.com is THE BEST place for DP fans, because you keep in touch with fans, we have some kind of interaction, between fans, group and the site administration. thanks for all this.
deeppurple.com is good fan site, cool design and official information, but ths.com is leader in Purple sites. as it’s updated almost every day. I find out all Purple information from here, cause every good news is posted for the first time here, and then on another sites.
I’m looking forward this title in the news: “Deep Purple working on new album”. it’ll be the best news ofr us 🙂
thanks again and happy new year to ths.com administration.
December 30th, 2007 at 09:1339 Russian Federation
December 30th, 2007 at 10:17Wow… Only 39th place…
palkin, NO, Russian Federation is on the 12-th place.
December 30th, 2007 at 14:27look at the page views: “105,883”
George:
the most viewable news item was our april fools prank about gillan touring with sabbath 😉 . the most commented (75) was 2008 touring.
the most viewed item in blog was blackmore’s interview, the first setlist poll was the most commented with 125.
as for photos, sorry, but we don’t keep stats for individual images, only for text pages.
December 30th, 2007 at 15:05T and ZP2011:
i was surprised about relatively poor showing of france too. the only reason i can think of is that not too many people there speak english. unlike in scandinavia or netherlands, for example.
December 30th, 2007 at 15:09I believe that the most commented on ‘ News Item ‘ was the ‘ Induct Ritchie Blackmore into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ‘ petition led with 92 posts, Nick 🙂
December 30th, 2007 at 15:57Ooops, just saw that 125 …sorry ’bout that .
December 30th, 2007 at 16:23Nick Soveiko
thanks again 🙂
December 30th, 2007 at 21:03George, oops))) I look only on the places 🙂
December 30th, 2007 at 21:56Wow! I always had the feeling to be just one of the few dutchmen reading this nice page. I visit it almost everyday. Keep up the good work.
Happy New Year,
Robert.
December 31st, 2007 at 09:49HELLO, I M AN ARGENTINE FAN WRITING FROM BUENOS AIRES ,RIGHT HERE WE ARE MUCH MORE WHICH WE ARE CREATED, I THINK THAT, RITCHIE IS THE GREAT ROCK AND ROLL GUITARRIST, HE MUST RETURN…..SORRY FOR MY POOR ENGLISH, HAPPY NEW YEAR
December 31st, 2007 at 11:01From Chile!!!
Happy New Year to all PURPLE HEADS!!
December 31st, 2007 at 14:44Hello, I am from Israel – for the million pepole we are it’s realy cool to knoe 3700 users are coming here which erge DP to come here at last and give us some great time ……
what do you need more ??? oh !!!
thanks anyway
December 31st, 2007 at 17:45soory : 5 million pepole and not only 1…
December 31st, 2007 at 17:47Eyal:
i’m afraid you’re missing the point. there are 3,700 thousand (3.7 million) people in israel who have regular internet access (“internet users”). how many come to our site we don’t know.
December 31st, 2007 at 18:04o.k.
sorry.
thanks for the point !!
Eyal
December 31st, 2007 at 19:03USA or not to USA, that’s the question?
Today I read on CLassic Rock(From USA)that “MADE IN JAPAN” made it number one in the top 50 poll of live albums…………
More curious :
In the Netherlands we have on Radio 2 the TOP 2000 every end of the year…………
In Rotterdam we had a LOCAL “NOT the top 2000- eperiment” :A first one, that is.
I have not been able to listen or add songs(One was able to do suggestions/requests)but appearently it made up for a nice and alternative list of music.
So no “Child In Time”(which made it to number 4 on the regular top 2000), If I m not mistaken……..
I saw “Blind man” on the charts, so I guess that must mean someone suggested “When a blind man cries”. Not?
But………….
NO RAINBOW!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe next(time)year?
Hell, I was even in the location where the radio was localised for this experiment : in the Central Library………
I could have suggested “Stargazer”or “Mistreated Live”. Yeah!!!!!
So, No Rainbowwwwwwwwwwwww……………..
But they played “Village Lanterne “by Blackmore’s nNght!!!!!!!!!!
December 31st, 2007 at 20:48Ritchie’s revenge?
Yeah, it’s me again.
Spending this night with my cat Ian(…) I m watching Dutch Television broadcasting the Top 2000.
Ian is already 15 years old and I am here for his comfort.
It would be so wrong to go out and later finding out my only remaing cat(With a Purple name) died from a stroke due to the fear brought along by the relentless fireworks.
BTW. Marco said he did NOT like NOWADAYS Deep Purple songs, he prefers the OLD days…………
Do not kill me now, HE said it………..
I saw the concerto in 99 thanx to the AIRMILES saved by my aunt.
I did NOT have such a good time because I really HTED hearing Steve instead of Blackers………….
On top of that I could NOT get in the DPAS convention day. That was really emberassingggggggggggggggggg……………
Hello Simon…….
My aunt never got a enthusiastic answer when she asked how the trip went……….
And my “family affairs are not that great already……..
Maybe I should not be so harsh and pay her my respect by giving her the DVD of the event?
How the mood can soften on days like these…………..
13 minutes to go………………
Till 2008…………
EXITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
Child In Time on 4…………..
Interview with Dutch composer Marco De Goeij who wrote out again the score for the Concerto.
Can it get any better?
To know that Led Zeppelin is on 5, and OUR band on 4…………..
Yes, it can get better…………
They showed my favourite version from “Doing their thing”…………
December 31st, 2007 at 22:46