10,000 metal releases came out this year
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| Click to enlarge by Cosmo Lee |
Metal-archives.com, metal’s great database, has interesting search capabilities. I did searches for the total number of metal releases, full-lengths, and demos per year for the past 30 years. “Releases” constitute all media formats: full-lengths, demos, box sets, DVD’s, and so on. Above are the results as a graph (click to enlarge).
Notice that from 2001 to 2006, the total number of releases rose more much quickly than before. The number of demos roughly rose in proportion, while the number of albums rose, but not as steeply. I would guess that this is due to the increasing affordability and availability of home-based digital recording.
Here is the data in table format:
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First, note that 2009’s numbers are much lower than those of previous years. I would guess that this is because Metal-archives’ users are still inputting the year’s data, which will likely take a year or two to settle down after peer review. (The site is sort of a wiki.)
Second, note that the number of demos peaked in 2005 and has decreased each year since. I would guess that digital recording is allowing musicians to “convert” demos into full-lengths. Since hard drive space is trivially cheap now, the only real cost of home recording is time. Instead of making a three-song demo, why not make a 10-song album?
Finally, note the general increase in numbers over the past 30 years. It is absurd. In 1986, what I consider metal’s best year ever — see what came out then — 458 full-lengths came out. It would have been possible for someone to hear all of them, at a rate of 38 per month. Last year, over 10 times as many full-lengths came out. One would have had to listen to over 400 albums per month to hear everything.
Such multiplicity means that consensus is likely impossible to reach nowadays. Year-end lists show much less overlap because people have many more choices. This comports with Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail
