I thought it would be nice to take a look into the evolution of the various types of releases. The information has been taken from the search engine; 2013-01-01. All can be found here:
http://archive.org/details/EvolutionOfMetalGenresReleaseTypes



Even though one might suspect something different, the massive drop in the amount of demos per year might come unexpected, or? It seems that the metal scene has seen a shift from the spreading of demos to something more serious. The rise might be due to the spread of the Internet, but this impact seems to have faded out a bit, while other types have taken over.

Here are the separate graphs. I should note that the one on the VHS/Video entries seems to have errors in the more recent additions.


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Releases per year:
https://ia601609.us.archive.org/8/items ... erYear.png

Submissions per month:
https://ia601609.us.archive.org/8/items ... rMonth.png

To me it seems like nowadays the demo has gone the straight digital route and if a band releases anything it jumps right into something more official like a full length, or split or whatever. Esp with the amount of smaller labels willing to work with small bands and the more affordable duplication and replication processes. So instead of burning or releasing a hundred hand done tapes it doesn't cost that much more to go on and have it professionally done otherwise.

Nevertheless, the drop is immense. The amount of demos per year has returned to a level of twenty years ago. How this plays out in respect to the genres is rather impossible to say, because the results would have too large an error, which is especially due to the lack in adequate labeling of the bands and therefore of releases.

This. The number of demos accelerates like nuts around the year 2000, almost tripling in a few years. Did thousands of people suddenly decide to start metal bands and bang out demos? I don't think so. It makes more sense that the rise of file sharing exploded distribution is all. Before file sharing, physical copies of demos could vanish into obscurity months after recording. Since file sharing, no demo has to stay obscure, and as long as someone knows about it, someone will put it in the archives.

Until just now, MA has never allowed a band to be added if they released only digitally. There always had to be a physical copy, or some proof that one existed once. So the apparent collapse of demos likely simply reflects the fact that more bands are releasing their demos only digitally, and hence they are not appearing in the archives.

Let the hunt begin.

yea I'm constantly emailing bands on bandcamp if they have physical releases for some of their stuff and it's a 60/40- 70/30 split of no physical goodies.

I agree with SLK. The drop is almost definitely because of the change in technology and the way the industry works - bands no longer need to put out demo tapes in hopes of getting signed to labels, and mp3s or wavs become the name of the game, I see very few local bands putting out demos any more (there are a couple, but usually these are in small release.), but they will feature recordings on their ReverbNation/Soundcloud/whatnot pages.

That, and the fact of the matter is anyone with enough time and some recording software/hardware can put out a full-length now. It might not be of great quality, but they can do it from their bedrooms with great ease, provided they have the songs written.

Also, and I might be pissing in the wind here, but could there perhaps be a correlation between that and the rise in doom? I've never really known doom bands to go for the demo/EP thing, but be much more interested in making long as hell full-lengths, even if they only consist of one or two songs.

this confirms exactly what i suspected for a few years.
I wonder how the full length graph develops over time as well. Metal labels seem to have become more prolific and have been signing a few more bands the last few years. I wonder if metal has become more profitable? Certainly death metal has with the wave of new old school death metal bands.

You also need to consider the high level on which black metal still is; over 4k releases a year. If you look at the main graph of the current status of the metal scene, then doom only ranks fourth with not even half of what either black and death metal bands throw out a year. Of course the graphs are not exact and only indicate a vague direction, but they help to understand the evolution of metal a bit better.

Another trend I've noticed with bands debuting digitally - They just don't call them demos anymore. Bands are lumping together their first batch of songs under some title, putting some digital artwork with it, and calling it their first album. Sometimes EP. This would help explain why the number of demos collapses while full-lengths and EPs continues to trend upwards.

Also this site has been edited properly at the Internet Archive now.

Well the definition of demo is such:



Demo's are generally used to show labels and others what you do or for a rough draft of the final copy (like demos of LP's). Some bands putting out stuff aren't really showcasing their material for a label or anything especially if they play shows. I think we are definitely seeing a change with regards to that but demos will never die imo.

2000 - CD burners, 2005 - MySpace?