I was just discussing this with friends, anyone had any idea? How many copies bands like Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel and so forth sell nowadays, worldwide?

And even for more progressive but still cult metal bands like Neurosis, any ideas of how many copies Neurosis will sell of a release worldwide?

If anyone has any links/information I would thank you!

I think record sales are terrible. Without any actual proof it has just been my observation, at least in my local community, that young metalheads would rather use their money on video games rather than music.

Most headbangers I know still buy CDs, but I spend more time around melodic metal guys. I can't imagine record sales are that high, though - extreme metal is already a niche of sorts, and combined with the fact there are people out there who would rather steal the music, even of pub-level bands, things would be a bit grim. Bands like Cannibal Corpse perhaps survive because of merchandise, but that is just a hunch.

Probably shite. If your name isn't Metallica or Iron Maiden you're not selling much. I hate this genre anyways so who gives a fuck.

I just would like to know what the market is nowadays. I know grindcore and death metal sold like crazy between 90-94 or so. I think Morbid Angel managed to sell about 250.000 copies or something like that. It's interesting to know/see how the market is nowadays and how it has developed.

It's gotten bad enough to the point that it's just no longer profitable to make a run of CDs or Tapes without an online source as well. It used to be that music was well-sought in scenes, and I imagine the Toronto scene was great back in the day, but these days it's absolutely pitiful how pathetic CD sales are among underground vendors. This is mostly the fault of apathy among younger metalheads and "music lovers". Go out in the city and support your fuckin' scene.

Wouldn't call their current music extreme in general, but Testament's Dark Roots Of Earth definitely had some death growls on it, and it reached the #12 on the Billboard 200, which is their highest charting ever, and impressive for a metal band at any time, much less in this slim-selling all-around era.

At least in my city, underground (and by extension, extreme) music sells well enough so that it's profitable for a couple of the most importants stores in the area to put it on sale. And believe me, some of the stuff flies off the shelves. No idea about the situation on a bigger scale though.

Also, this. I buy music, for instance. Not as much as I'd like to, but I do.

Why is everyone criticizing the "young" metalheads? It's because of the fact that music is now widely digital and online, and that anyone with at least a double digit IQ can pirate music online for free. It has nothing to do with age and everything to do with the digital revolution. Justin Bieber's fans are largely preteen girls, and yet his still sells is droves. Young people still buy. Maybe not as much, but the difference isn't enough to account for what's going on nowadays.

"young" metalfans lack disposable incomes and download music because they grew up downloading music. That group is now just about anyone 30 and under. Older music fans of just about any genre generally still show a preference to buying physical media. For a lot of people, it doesn't matter.

Well, you've mentioned pretty big names, and these are the ones who sell the most. Cannibal Corpse specifically is supposed to be the death metal band who holds a certain record sales in their field. I don't remember 100% whether it was album sales or overall sales, including merchandise, but they're number one at something sales related in the US. If I'm not totally off, the ballpark for a new CC album would be somewhere around 100,000 copies.

I don't have more precise info at hand, but these days, I'd say you rouhgly have 3 or 4 groups of bands in the overall sales pyramid, with massive gaps from one step to the next. At the top of the food-chain are mega bands who are well-known of the mainstream audience, who will typically sell a truckload of copies of anything they churn out by default, but who are typically signed to a major label and have all the restrictions and sales target that go with it. Maiden selling under a million copies could be seen as a commercial failure, in that sense. No "extreme" metal band (extreme by metalheads' standards) really falls in this category at the moment. The closest would be Amon Amarth, Dethklok, Arch Enemy, Bodom, Cradle, Dimmu Borgir... stuff like that. Or Slayer, if you will (but you won't).

Scroll down to the base, and a reasonably successful, relatively new band operating strictly within its niche of the metal realm will be happy to shell out 10 or 20K copies of an album. At this stage, I don't think the "extreme vs accessible" factor is the most important one. Sure, a decent EuroPM band might sell a bit more than a decent Darkthrone worship act, but I'm not even sure of that. Whatever the genre, it's how famous or hyped you are, and how big the community you're famous or hyped within.


*sigh* Is this thread going to turn into another of these "you wouldn't steal a car" strawmen? Topics about record sales tend to fall for that around here, and I see a few such posts already. *sigh*


People who are not you?

What genre? Metal? Have you noticed where you are?

around my highschool, most people, even scene-monglers (as I call them), like to buy CD's from bands they like as much as they can. But there are still a lot of kids who would rather just download their music. However, I notice when I go to FYE that black metal bands especially sell out fast, so I guess the local fans still buy their music.

I'd just like to get some factual, hard data if possible. I guess this will only happen if someone from the industry drops by this thread.

For instance, what does Earache and Peaceville and Relapse sell like nowadays? How much does a band like Cerebral Bore sells? Or even the mentioned Dark Throne? Or bands like Kylesa? Baroness? Mastodon?

I think the scenario is about what you described, Legend. Slayer is an interesting case in point as they are the gateway to extreme metal and are pretty much "extreme metal" in their own terms. Very different from the other big 3 to say the least. Much harsher. Can they sell a million in 2012?

I read the new Neurosis sold over a thousand in it's first week and that was considered "good".

Cannibal Corpse "Torture" sold nearly 9600 copies in its first week. So, you can probably put together how miserably extreme metal sells. These bands make what money they can through shows and merch sales. Between the ridiculous price of gas and clubs cutting deeper into their t-shirt money, I don't see how any of them profit at all. This is basically a neat hobby, from what I can gather.

P.S. Neurosis "Honor Found in Decay"

Stop complaining about "kids these days" and bringing up straw-man arguments about buying habits, your observations and stereotyping don't further discussions. Any sort of blaming poor sales on certain groups is not productive.



There aren't huge gaps unless you're talking about massive commercial successes like Metallica's s/t, which sold 15m in the US alone. You could divide it into tiers based on label side, but there is overlap despite promotional/marketing/budget differences, and bands certainly fill out a full spectrum of sales.

Maiden haven't sold half a million in the US since "No Prayer for the Dying", the last album they were close to a million copies of was Brave New World. Slayer's primary market is the US, and they haven't shipped a million copies of a single album here - Reign through Divine went gold (500k+). Testament sold only ~150k copies of The New Order in the US, but over a million worldwide, while Practice was close to going gold a few years ago and might hit it this year due to the band's huge exposure in touring and recent success selling 10k+ in the first week. You'll find albums with numbers all across the spectrum from a hundreds to a million, though it gets sparser the higher you go. Some bands are successful in some markets but not in others (US, Europe, South America, and Japan are big ones), some are relatively equal (Iron Maiden manage to hit gold in most medium size markets pretty reliably now).

It is hard to find sales statistics though - US sales are documented fairly well through Soundscan, but you can rarely find beyond first week sales unless it's a big commercial success and they decide to publish it. Worldwide sales are harder to find - you can generally find certifications of units shipped for bigger sellers in up to a dozen major countries, but that's rare. In all but the best cases, publishing sales isn't a great PR move, and bands rarely dwell on it.

Maiden sales stats in the US as of 2005: http://www.blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?m ... emID=32290
You can find most first-week sales if you search Blabbermouth news articles.

Metalinsider runs a weekly column that documents first week and notable sales of various bands: http://www.metalinsider.net/category/metal-by-numbers

Metal Sucks does the same thing.

Basically looking at that, few bands are selling more than 1000 albums their first week if you're not a name brand.

like others have said, i dont think there is any real numbers past the first week or so of sales. we have been in a post-physical media world for quite some time. the physical format is all but dead. its futile to argue with that fact.

not metal per se, but interesting nonetheless. speaks of band royalties via streaming;

http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/8993-the-cloud/

I think the physical format will still go on, but we won't ever have millions of copies being sold again like the music industry did for so many decades.

However, as vinyl proves it, there will always be a market for collectors and die hard fans. But nothing like it was in the second half of the XX century. Mildly successful extreme metal bands will always be able to sell 10.000 copies or so, between vinyl and CDs, I'm pretty sure.

If that allows you to LIVE out of music is another discussion...

The smart ones can adapt somewhat: CD sales go down, vinyls become semi-hip and more bands go the Radiohead route of letting people pay what they want or just giving it out (Thou and Senmuth come to mind). Venues and distributors demand more cuts of the merch-pie, more bands handle it from their own site or even make their merch themselves. Transportation costs are high and but we'll see more alternative energy vehicles, and Immolation managed to write and record Majesty and Decay with the members living in different states, saving a lot on gas, time, and studio fees. I just don't see how much longer CD sales will be a relevant way of measuring success in this industry, as even in the mainstream performers like Adele who manage to sell tens of millions of CDs are becoming a total anomaly. I'm not sure how it ranks elsewhere, but here in Arkansas most people I know have a lot more vinyls than CDs and the gap is getting bigger.

I think that physical will die more and more as streaming becomes the norm and since we already have refrigerators with twitter and google (http://mashable.com/2011/01/09/samsung-tweeting-refrigerator/) pretty soon it won't be just youtube and spotify for us to just stream all we want, whenever we want. We will live in a world in which every car, every hardware, every tv will and is already streaming every content we can think of.

In that sense, sales will never be what they used to be.

But metal fans are a loyal bunch, and that's why the small, niche but loayl market flourishes. It is small, but it's still business. It's likey collecting baseball cards, or star wars toys, only a few people do it, but the ones who do it are dedicated. So a few thousand copies are sure to go to those niche markets. But like I said, only a few thousand, and this is even more true for death metal bands.

If at the peak of the genre in the early 90s the bands were selling 120, 200 thousand, I don't think those numbers can ever be repeated given the market as it is and the facts we discussed here.

The festival circuit, speciall in Europe though, seems to be thriving.

I remember Carcass used to play to about 1000 people in their USA tours in the 90s? Well now they headline things like Hellfest and play to 30.000 people. And do you know how much they got for a gig they played in Brazil for 2000 people (sold out the club). I kid you not: 40.000 USD.

I very much doubt they every got 40k in the 90s for a gig. Ever.

On the other hand their new album will probably sell something like 50.000 copies, worldwide, total? Strange world, isn't it?

Found this:

The top-selling death metal albums of the SoundScan era are as follows:

MORBID ANGEL - "Covenant" (1993): 127,154
DEICIDE - "Deicide" (1990): 110,719*
DEICIDE - "Legion" (1992): 103,544
OBITUARY - "The End Complete" (1992): 103,378
CANNIBAL CORPSE - "The Bleeding" (1994): 98,319

Dennis and Lance from Macabre say that they see next to nothing in terms of album sales towards them and that their revenue is split between touring and merchandise 'because kids love wearing shirts with serial killers on them', haha.

That's not necessarily a good indicator. I've seen the same band headline to thousands of people in NYC and the same year play to 50 people in Connecticut, and they also played major European festivals. While a $40k gig is something that makes a difference financially to a band, variations in the venue, support, promotion, ticket prices, locale, and even day of the week can be a huge difference - bands may even lose money playing smaller cities between other dates, but if it loses less money than off-days and they can make it up playing big cities on weekends, those make a huge difference. For a band like Carcass a big show in a major city brings a ton of money. Consider the deductions though - flights from England to Brazil for four band members plus crew, plus bringing instruments, renting amps and drums, and any other expenses on that tour not covered (food, lodging, local transit). $40,000 is a big number, but when you consider that at least $10k of that is sunken into the costs I mentioned, plus booking and management fees, rehearsal space and time, and misc expenses, it's not like each guy is putting $10k in his pocket for a night of work. This is an example of a band seeing reward for being one of the most renowned of their type, a legend returning to reap their reward 20 years later - If one of their bigger shows earns $6000 for each band member (likely more for the songwriters and less for the session guy), then 20 shows like that in a year amidst dozens of other lesser ones might give them the same pay as someone who excelled in a corporate job for 20 years, but while living in a tour bus away from home. They faced the same conditions for at least a decade before getting to that point (at least Amott did most constantly for 20 years, more struggling than not). The world leaders of this can make six digits for a year when they're 40 years old by doing some rough road work? Good for them, it must really suck for everyone who does the same but makes $4000 instead of $40000 on their strong days. Big numbers don't mean consistent six digit salaries.

i agee

Zodi about this:

"flights from England to Brazil for four band members plus crew, plus bringing instruments, renting amps and drums, and any other expenses on that tour not covered (food, lodging, local transit)."

I know the promoter of the gig. All of these things are paid for. The 40k is Carcass's standard fee for the gig, besides all the costs you mentioned! The local production team has to provide the plane tickets, renting the equipment, transport, hotels, etc, everything for the band. They don't pay none of that.

[quote="FredSanford"]Cannibal Corpse "Torture" sold nearly 9600 copies in its first week. So, you can probably put together how miserably extreme metal sells. These bands make what money they can through shows and merch sales. Between the ridiculous price of gas and clubs cutting deeper into their t-shirt money, I don't see how any of them profit at all. This is basically a neat hobby, from what I can gather.

[quote]KARL SANDERS Says NILE Is 'Taking A Beating' In Age Of Downloading

Attention Deficit Delirium: Given how tough everything is for bands nowadays, how is NILE holding up?

Sanders: Taking a beating. In the age of downloading, everyone thinks that all the money will be made on tour. Dude, that's also where we're getting hit really hard. Just the rising cost of transportation — the bus and the cost of diesel fuel — is our biggest fucking expense. That stuff has skyrocketed, yet we don't see an increase in the amount of money from the promoters. They might be charging higher ticket prices to kids, but that money is not really trickling down to us. We're getting it on all sides, man. Some of the larger cities are imposing higher and higher fees for selling your merch. Concert T-shirts are at a stupid[ly high] price now because you get taxed 40 to 45% right out of the gate, off the top. The band has to buy the shirts to start off with, and somebody is taking 40% of the gross in every city. It's no picnic out there.

Keep in mind a few things: That was just the first week and just the US, where metal doesnt sell nearly as good. Paul even said that theyre doing good enough to make it a living.
As far as Nile, I thought the new album was boring(which Im sure a lot of other people did too), so its not really surprising that it didnt sell too much. It seems the bands that are complainning(ahem, Morbid Angel), are the ones making shitty albums. I downloaded the new MA album illegally, just to hear it, and deleted it the same day. There were maybe two decent songs, the rest was generic death metal, along with a shitty intro/outro, and horrible experimenting.

Post smarter stuff with a smarter spelling, please.

As Rich Hoak said in a van before, it's easier to sell a million TFD/Brutal Truth shirts then selling a million copies of any album. And it's better that way since they make more money on merch then albums.

Not trying to drag back the "young metalheads" thing, as I'm sure it happens at all ages, but something which genuinely annoys me, and something I have trouble understanding, is the sheer lack of motivation people have when presented with the availability of live shows.

I know people who live perhaps a 20-minute walk from venues which are hosting bands they enjoy listening too, and yet they don't show up to the shows, even when they're not busy with other things... It makes me feel almost upset really. If you have the resources and free time to see a band you enjoy, but don't show up, I just don't know what to make of it. A lack of commitment, I guess.

Hope that's not too off-topic.

Lots of good points made on this thread.

One other reason it's gonna get harder and harder to get big selling numbers is that there is more competition than ever. This means whatever money people have to spend on this kind of music, the pieces of the pie are becoming thinner as everyone is vying for your attention.

In the 80s, you almost had to follow a certain old school path. Create your own music through lots of rehearsing, do as many gigs as you can, knock on doors and look hard to find connections and produce a demo that probably sounded like shit and then hope to get signed. It was hard work.

Things slowly changed to what we have today. It's never been easier to have gear. there's tutorials everywhere on playing, singing, recording, business management. The information is readily available free. Almost every musician I know has at least the basic knowledge and gear to produce a quality demo and many can do a decent job at an album. Companies that can help you make your own merchandise are also everywhere, more accessible to common folks than they were back then. And blogs as well as websites like this one here will give you the same exposure as they would give professional guys.

Effectively, you don't need to make as many sacrifices as you used to in order to try and have a run at this music thing. You can be a parent, hold a 9 to 5 job you don't need all these super connections and a manager and lots of money.

But what happens is you will have a hard time building a following that leads to worthy sales numbers because there are hundreds of bands just like you out there.

I think this is an advantage for metal bands in this sense, being somewhat of a niche market and all.
While the pop music-buying public buys single songs from iTunes and whatnot, metal bands are probably (can't back this up) selling relatively better in comparison to pop bands. Metal fans still care about things like cover art, reading lyrics and getting things signed... somewhat "nerdy" things that not many non-subculture forms of music bother with, but to their advantage I think. I remember reading that the last/second-last Dream Theater album hit #9 on the Australian charts, which is pretty solid considering.

Civil beat me to it by miles re: the appearance fees for "festival" bands. Those acts like Carcass, Emperor, Immortal, and so on that no longer tour in the traditional sense but do short, major market or festival only "events" are doing pretty well. Does anyone think MDF isn't booking a lot of these airplane tickets themselves instead of pushing it to the bands? C'mon people.

Suffocation will soon be a band like that too because the cost of touring vs. having real jobs would otherwise destroy the band for a second time. The problem for bands who aren't of that ilk is that, well, no one else might ever be.

I saw some numbers for the Morbid Angel release and they sold around 3,500 CDs the first week of the I album, which is about the same as Heretic. Bigger bands still still doing ok sales wise but definitely not what they were 12 years ago or so.

"Things slowly changed to what we have today. It's never been easier to have gear. there's tutorials everywhere on playing, singing, recording, business management. The information is readily available free. Almost every musician I know has at least the basic knowledge and gear to produce a quality demo and many can do a decent job at an album. Companies that can help you make your own merchandise are also everywhere, more accessible to common folks than they were back then. And blogs as well as websites like this one here will give you the same exposure as they would give professional guys.

Effectively, you don't need to make as many sacrifices as you used to in order to try and have a run at this music thing. You can be a parent, hold a 9 to 5 job you don't need all these super connections and a manager and lots of money.

But what happens is you will have a hard time building a following that leads to worthy sales numbers because there are hundreds of bands just like you out there."

Riffs, that's exactly it.

Plus all the downloading and streaming, with even the refrigerator I have posted about being able to stream free music. Which means that even if it is easier to record and release music, who is buying it?

How many of you older guys like me (30 or more) buy as much albums as you used to in the 90s? I think it's very few of you.

I buy vinyl nowadays almost exclusively.

Also, about many bands being the same out there: I've been checking distros and the such, the ammount of extreme death metal and generic black metal that is out there is enourmous. I mean, seriously, do people actually listen to this stuff? It's ALL predictable metal, which has been done over and over and over again for the past 20 years.

It gets harder and harder to be creative within the rock format. And I think there's a tendency for things to stagnate.

I certainly can't stand listening to the majority of death and black metal bands out there. And there are thousands, literally thousands!

I mean, I really don't wanna diss the guys, but I was checking general extreme metal labels etc online.

Nothing against this band, but who listens to "Cystic Dysintery" in 2012? The guys play well, it's very well recorded, but honestly, there are THOUSANDS of bands doing this out there, and there have been, for decades. How many copies can this sell???

I have all the respect for the hard work the guys are putting in the music, and the playing is superb. But the lyrics and songwriting/artwork are so, so predictable. It must be hard to sell more than 10.000 copies of this.

What's your point? It was just yesterday you were asking where you could get underground extreme metal. It doesn't seem that you are that well versed in the underground scene. Certainly there are a lot of small operations but there have always been smaller labels. You have a lot of advantages that others didn't have 15 or 20 years ago like streaming music, so people can give things a trial run first. I just listed our next two albums up for stream before the release date. I don't care if people listen to it and buy...I'm pretty confident that I am putting out solid releases.

When I ran my "9 to 5," I spent over 40 hours a week on the label in my "spare time." It doesn't take any less effort...it just depends on what you want to get out of it. Some labels and even bands aren't looking to be the next Nuclear Blast or Metallica, so they have different priorities. It's difficult for any underground artist to sell 10,000 copies, much less a band like that Cystic Dysintery? who you mentioned. Goals and expectations are much different due to the circumstances.

If you can't stand listening to the majority of black and death metal music out there, perhaps you're looking in the wrong direction because there are some superb newer acts.

Ogmetal sorry if you play in the band or if I offended you. I have been listening to extreme metal for over 20 years now. But I tend to look for more progressive bands or bands that, in my view, push the genre forward, bring in new elements, change the conventions of music, lyrics, artwork, etc if you get me. I'm open to listen to anything and like I said I have total respect for CD (the band), but it's not something that will be remembered, you know what I mean?

The point of this thread for me is more to try and understand how much a band like CD will sell - total, for a release, and how much metal is selling in general, in particular extreme metal which goes from say Mastodon (early Mastodon was pretty brutal, and they came from the underground for sure) to bands like CD. So we can all have a picture of what's happening in the market and in the scene in general.

I mean, if one starts a band like CD, how much can he/she expect to sell, nowadays? I think that's a valid question.

I apologize if I offended you or anyone. It's just a matter of personal taste in the end, what I mentioned about the fact that I don't believe that extreme death metal with gory covers and more "generic" brutal riffs can go very far in terms of musicianship, or even sales, specially now, regardless of the music bein very well recorded and executed. It's clear that the musicians in CD are super good professionals.

You didn't offend me and no, I don't play in a band. It's obvious you're looking at the wrong side of things. I know little to nothing about brutal death metal.

Only 5 percent of albums pressed sell more than 2,000 CDs. This number is in line with previous numbers even from years ago.

A typical underground pressing is 500 to 1,000 CDs. There are exceptions, of course. I'm speaking on the underground bands and not about bigger bands like you mentioned in your original post.

a new band starting out has a hard time selling even 100 copies, let alone ten thousand. i know bands that bave been doing world tours for several years who have trouble selling more than a few hundred