Every month we take a look at Spotify’s ‘monthly listeners’ counts for several hundred metal bands and compare them side by side to gauge their relative popularity at any given moment. For more on why we’re doing this column and the methodology behind it, read this.
The numbers for May are in — including over 40 bands added to our chart — and 260 of the 343 artists tracked (nearly 76%) saw increases in listenership month over month from April as the streaming industry continues to grow. A report we published in March showed that 83% of the $12 billion in overall revenue generated by recorded music in the U.S. in 2020 came from streaming.
Some of the biggest gainers in the metal world over the past month included:
- Gojira (23.91%)
- Fear Factory (30.74%)
- Cannibal Corpse (33.89%)
- Light the Torch (40.47%)
- Red Fang (46.64%)
- Gwar (42.01%)
- At the Gates (24.71%)
- Carnifex (34.21%)
- Wednesday 13 (48.79%)
- Frozen Crown (58.86%)
- Blaze Bayley (36.88%)
- Dark the Suns (41.12%)
- Author & Punisher (25.57%)
- Sojourner (89.91%)
Artists who saw the biggest drops:
- Entombed (-23.58%)
- Sleep (-20.84%)
- Darkest Hour (-21.05%)
- Eyehategod (-32.48%)
- Wolfheart (-30.86%)
These rankings, it must be stated, are not comprehensive: the bands included on our list were chosen manually, and it is absolutely the case that many bands aren’t included (please email vince@metalsucks.net if you’d like to see them added next month). For that reason, we haven’t numbered these rankings: to do so would disingenuously give the appearance this is a comprehensive list, which it is not.
You can view the most recent chart numbers, along with the entire history of these charts, in the embed below or here.