Rick Beato asks "Where Have All the Metalheads gone?"

An interesting short video from Rick Beato asking why are there so few meal fans anymore. The 7-year cycle theory is an interesting point of view that I am not sure I agree with, but which I hope is true as it means that metal will be due a resurgence soon. 

I had a look at the streaming figures for the top 10 acts on the Metal Academy charts and their figures are pretty paltry when you see a bland and colourless act like Coldplay receives 90 million+ streams a month:

Metallica - 31, 487, 283

Black Sabbath - 17, 188, 205

Iron Maiden - 8, 435, 540

Judas Priest - 4, 252, 276

Slayer - 3, 203, 605

Death - 896, 338

Candlemass - 204, 058

Immolation - 44, 217

Neurosis - 34, 828

Wolves In the Throne Room - 27, 591

Total - 65, 773, 941

That is nearly 26 million streams per month less than fucking Coldplay for ten of the biggest bands in metal combined.

No one knows better than I that metal has always been an outsider style, but after the early 2000s it seemed to have gained a degree of acceptability which seems to have once again evaporated. Do any of you see a way back for metal or are we always doomed to living in the shadows of lesser genres. And, in fact, would you really ever want it any other way or is the outsider tag part of the charm?

I'm not sure at all. There is a lot more metal to listen to with lots of different sub-genres - so the top listens may not give the full picture. I did a quick copilot analysis of the monthly listens. And it came up with hip hop (probably unsurprisingly at the top, with pop next, then latin and then metal. So not to unhealthy when you look at is as a whole. 

Data used (in millions):

Hip Hop / Rap: 1,000M

Other Pop: 748.52M

(Coldplay: 91.48M)

Latin: 520M

Metal: 400M

Electronic / Dance: 400M

R&B / Soul: 280M

Punk: 200M

Indie Rock: 150M

Jazz: 100M

Classical: 60M

Of course spotify produced and promoted playlists will certainly increase the listens of some genres, I'm not sure it would have the same impact on metal. So in all, I'm not sure there are so few metal fans around these days in comparison to the past. 

I am not sure why Coldplay has such a big share on its own and the fact that it seems pretty consistent.  

Look, I think there's something in the idea that metal continues to gain & lose popularity in a cyclic fashion but I don't think there's any reason to believe that it's a regular cycle of seven years. Personally, I don't think it's a repeatable pattern. It's simply about when the next big commercial metal subgenre or band pops up in my opinion & you can't really put a timeline on that.

As for where all the metalheads have gone, I think it's easy to take a shallow view & say that we don't see as many of the traditional long-haired, black-band-shirt-wearing metalheads in society today but I think there's a reason for that. I've recently discovered that there are quite a few metalheads at my workplace for example but only two of them outwardly show off their musical passion & they are both of a similar ilk to myself. The others all got into metal through nu metal or later & we've seen that fans of post-2000 metal fads no longer feel the need to display their passion through long-hair & black band t-shirts so it's harder to identify them. They do however have a tendency towards tattoos but that's not strictly a metal trait any more with a larger & larger percentage of the population showing off significant amounts of permanent body art. So, what I'm saying is that there may be more metalheads around than people realise because it's not always obvious any more which is a little sad in my opinion.

Whoever the hell Rick Beato is, he clearly is short on content.  I don’t really care how popular metal (or indeed any other music genre) is.  I just listen to what I want and still fundamentally believe that there is far too much metal music out there already.

Fuck Coldplay though,  Plastic wankers.

To be honest, I am not sure what constitutes a "listen" on Spotify. If you listen to one track or even part of a track does that count as a "listen" or must it be something a bit more substantial? As David says, Spotify's own playlists probably generate an awful lot of "listens" for those bands featured on them and I have heard talk of labels actively paying Spotify to push their artists on those playlists, so it is hardly a level playing field. If only more people would listen to the Academy playlists we could boost the profile of metal on the platform!

Anyway, fuck em, as long as there are bands out there playing and releasing metal then they can keep all the fashionistas and trend-followers who jump on any bandwagon that is currently popular. 

Could it be that metal fans don't only listen to metal anymore? With a lot of metal music itself playing around with outside genres, and a few popular genres being more accessible in general, perhaps the average metal fan isn't as "metal or nothing" as they used to be?

I know that I listen to quite a lot of stuff that wouldn't be found on this site. My passion will always be metal, but I have much broader tastes than I once did. This could explain why you don't see as many obvious "metalheads" anymore. We're all just a little bit more cultured.

I also think that podcasts have likely taken over much of the space that used to be reserved for music. I would spend as much time listening to podcases as I do music. Not sure about the rest of you?