Ok, so in another thread I was bitching about this, and, rather than sully another thread with that, I thought I'd give it it's own thread because I think it's interesting.

To preface, I try to always listen to every band in the RYM yearly top 100 as it happens. I really don't like the vast majority of metal that gets ranked highly here (although I really liked 2008's Idolum) but I feel one of the biggest flaws with the overall rankings here is that people don't listen to albums they pretty obviously won't like, so the charts get oddly skewed.

Anyway, the thing that has stuck me the most in several years of doing this is how much money these bands, moreso than any genre outside of teen girl-pop, is being poured into marketing and merchandising. Metal, as a whole, exudes a sense of not caring about pedestrian contrivances such as an expensive line of clothing merch.

I work in the music industry and the design industry so I spend way too much time thinking about this stuff, I suppose. I've been involved with lots of bands and the bands of friends - fairly successful touring metal bands, and they never gave a shit about that stuff. Red Wizard, for example, used to buy used shirts by the pound from the Goodwill and stay up all night before tour hand painting on stenciled images and sold them at shows for $5. The fans at these underground, but still packed, shows, would never wear the stuff that the vast majority of the bands on RYM's top 250 sell.

I suppose when I first joined RYM I was shocked, as some are, by 'all the metal on the charts' - but not because I don't like metal and harsh-sounding bands - but because I'd never heard of them. It's only been through spending time on here that I've become aware of this. I go to metal shows, I'm friends with people in metal bands, and not a single person I know listens to any of this stuff.

So, my thoughts have drifted to the question - where does this stem from? As best as I can figure, due to it's huge popularity in Northern Europe, it's become a viable commercial entity that has little spillover to the US in a direct sense, but has the obviously huge Internet-dweller population behind it. There's no way that all these bands can afford, in addition to the usual t-shirt and CD, a variety of sizes of hoodies (with 3 or 4 screenprinting sections - very pricey!), a range of girlie tees, an array of singles, vinyl releases, patches, hats, live DVDs, alternate cover digipaks, etc., unless there was a gargantuan market for that sort of merch. And their websites and myspace pages are graphic-designed to the hilt - that shit is expensive too. And the press release photos - I've never seen a genre so inundated with carefully posed band press photos.

I find it interesting in a couple of ways:
First, the general attitude of metal, as I've known it, has always been closer to the fuck-commercialism ethos of punk than the heavy merchandising of pop and classic rock musicians. I know a guy's got to make a living, but I'm staggered at the sheer volume of sales these guys must be generating to warrant it.

Second, that this gets a pass at RYM and by the music press and critics in general. Bands that merchandise the crap out of their names usually are met with mountains of derision (Dave Matthews, for example). There's apparently a huge cottage industry involved with modern metal marketing. Be defensive about it if you want, but this is being pushed like teen pop for boys, regardless of the music itself.

I mean, I expect bands to have a shirt or something when on the road, but these guys must haul around more merch than gear, which is really the last thing I imagine coming from metal bands. There was a time not long ago when these guys would have been buried under cries of 'sell-out' as it seems to run contradictory to the message of the music, and, so, it baffles me that doesn't seem to happen. If it was going to happen, you'd think it would be here at RYM which seems to be an epicenter of sorts for this particular stripe of, perhaps, pop-black/death-metal? Corporate black metal? Is this the evolution of the genre into a relatively market-friendly subgenre like pop-punk?

How many major label guys stay on the RYM charts here for more than a brief moment, yet Moonspell is on Universal and are underwritten by no less than 6 gear manufacturers and have a horde of managers and promoters, Meshuggah has an exclusive shirt deal with mega-electronics chain Fye and 10 corporate underwriters, Testament is being sponsored by fucking Miller Lite (they always have been the Bud Lite to Metallica's Budweiser). (also, while not metal, I saw an ad for The Mars Volta's last one in the movie theater in between Coke ads the other day - it was surprising)

3/4 of the top 100 metal bands are on Nuclear Blast (kings of the ever annoying internet 'street team' marketing - http://www.myspace.com/nuclearblastusastreetteam) and a couple are on Relapse (who made a deal with internet advertisers to create their own search engine portal to make money from direct marketing) - this level of marketing is really astonishing to me for a genre whose fans gleefully deride the Korns and Slipknots of the world and whose ethos, on the surface, is, as I see it at least, contradictory to such things.

Anyway - just had it on my mind and wanted to post it.

what does selling out even mean?

what does selling out even mean?

Making shitty albums that do not please the tr00 audience.

If selling merchandise helps to keep the band afloat, what's the problem? There's more to being underground than not being on the radio...