The Eclectic Metalhead

I’m a longtime reader of GMU economist Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution blog and I’m quite pleased – not at all suprised – to read on his blog some interesting thoughts about the economics behind the length of Metal bands albums (I wouldn’t use the term CDs) :

Some metal bands develop great loyalty among their followers and achieve durable franchises.  That gives them a lower discount rate and they are more inclined to save up material for the future.  Plus they are marketing an overall sound — rather than clever particular innovations — and if the first forty (five?) minutes don’t convince you nothing will.  Rap songs probably have a higher individual variance.

I haven’t really asked myself why most of the Metal albums run at around 45 minutes – I’d say 50, but 45 is a good approximation – but neverthelss it is an interesting question. The assertion about Metal fans’ loyalty and the durability of the bands franchise is absolutely correct. Metal fans and Metal culture works this way, when being in a band you will want to think long term and build something durable, the quest for short term fame is almost always doomed to fail. And one of the main reasons is that it takes far more than one try to put out a high quality album and consequently to grow a solid fan base. When you do lengthy songs full of worthless intermezzos that’s nothing more than garbage in garbage out. Metal music is something extremely difficult to play, it requires a lot of effort and personal investment, your brand and sound is mostly build in the uderground local scenes and it takes a lot of time to reach the top, plus the fans are extremely demanding and have very good training at their subject. But once you have them, you have them for life. So when you can come up with 50 minutes of quality Metal music you’re more than good, you’re among the best. But it is indeed true that once you reach that phase you can allow your quality curve to somehow flatten, the fans will still be out there and you have less pressure to always come up with something new. At that point perfecting your art by slow margins – like improving production or marketing – is more efficient than being original which is intrinsically extremely costly. Countless well known Metal bands do this – Machine Head, Blind Guardian, Immortal, Sodom, Megadeth, Slayer, Kreator, Marduk, Children of Bodom, Behemoth, Napalm Death, My Dying Bride and so on – but there are also those who are not afraid to take the big leap of innovation precisely because they have achived the high quality status : Opeth, Satyricon, Carcass, Tiamat, Celtic Frost or Death.