When underground music came about, it addressed a simple problem: rising costs had forced market concentration in the music industry. This produced six big companies that owned all the content, paid all the people who promoted and played it on radio, and therefore shaped the listening audience.
6 CommentsTags: money, music industry
Many find it offputting that sites like DMU distinguish between music as mere product and music which offers something transcendent, inspiring, informative, or otherwise artistic in addition to wanting to be sold on the open market and succeed there.
6 CommentsTags: brill method, factory method, music industry
Jered Threatin’s masterful illusion has become the biggest “metal” story of 2018. But while his stunning viral campaign has bewildered many, no one has really picked up on the bigger picture of exactly what Threatin was able to pull off.
21 CommentsTags: fake, Jared Threatin, jered threatin, journalism, metal journalism, music business, music industry, Threatin
Despite the vitriolic hatred, nihilism, and misanthropy that death and black metal music is known for many artists/fans/labels have a developed a pretty blind system of trust and assumptions. This code of honor stems from a general assumption of a “metal brotherhood” along with the idea that beatings or some other justice would be served in the event anyone acting out of line while also publicly listing their address online. However the extreme metal scene has seen many legendary rip-off artists ranging from Peruvian fat-girl-fucker Christian Felipe Paucar Toledo, Nachmystium’s Blake Judd and his Battlekommand Records (now Ascension Monuments Media), and Blake’s drug addicted sidkick crony Jeff Wilson and his Disorder Recordings/Design. To date, none of these men have been beaten within an inch of their life despite robbing and conning people in droves, and all of them continue to tour and sell music. Therefore, ripping people off appears to carry no penalty, or at least within the boundaries of the metal world.
Many musicians on Bandcamp have reported they are receiving an emails from a “label” calling itself Via Nocturnal Records. The label starts off with an obviously generic message saying they want to release the band’s music on CD. After responding positively indicating interest, the label now sends the bait for a really outrageous and embarrassing metal scam.
7 CommentsTags: Ascension Monuments Media, Battlekommand Records, blake judd, Christian Felipe Paucar Toledo, Disorder Recordings, Fabian Filiks, Jeff Wilson, music industry, rip off, scam, via nocturna
Russ Solomon, the founder of the legendary Tower Records, passed away last Sunday while guzzling whiskey and hating on the lowest rated Oscar Awards in the history of the ceremony’s existence.target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow external”
6 CommentsTags: aging, Big Hollywood, consumerism, death, decline, music industry, Oscars, record stores, Russ Solomon, Tower Records
The Talk:
Every metal musician needs to have “The Talk” at some point or another and for some of you, this will be that moment. In the world of metal, “The Talk” is the soul crashing, dream obliterating conversation where one learns the valuable lesson that you can’t get rich playing extreme metal. It’s heartbreaking and defeating but better learned sooner than later. And since a young ambitious musician isn’t necessarily considering the logistics, lifestyle goals, etc. of their future before they drill on that pentagram neck tattoo, I want to make sure readers of DMU are abundantly clear on what to expect on the financial front when engaging in life as a touring musician.
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Tags: At the Gates, Black Metal, cannibal corpse, children of bodom, cradle of filth, dark tranquility, death metal, economics, gorgoroth, immolation, mayhem, metal, motorhead, music business, music industry, necrophagist, poverty, Thy Art is Murder, truth, watain, wealth, whitechapel
Often when analyzing music, it can be useful to look to other genres to develop an understanding its relation to the order of nature. Written and recorded music has been around for centuries, and with a multitude of genres emerging in the last hundred years, few have completely died out and disappeared.
43 CommentsTags: celebrity, classical music, crypto-indie, djent, electronic music, electronica, indie metal, indie rock, mainstream metal, music industry, post-metal, post-rock, rock, rock 'n' roll, rock music
Earlier this week the publishing catalog of metal mega-label Century Media has been pawned off for an undisclosed sum to Reservoir Media, a publishing boutique holding the royalty rights to songs by a variety of pop artists ranging from Drake to Lady Gaga. In investment terms, a boutique is defined as a financial firm that deals with a specific market, so picture Reservoir as a wealthy Wolf of Wall Street-like conglomerate recklessly gambling with the royalties of musicians. This is common in the modern music market, where suits are making bets on the evolving payout methods streaming services, but the surrender of Century Media’s entire catalog of albums (Death, Paradise Lost, In Flames) to a finance firm playing with house money goes to show how desperate the corporate metal labels of yesteryear have become.
5 CommentsTags: candlelight records, capitalism, century media, century media records, copyright, crypto-indie, mainstream metal, music industry, reservoir media, spinefarm records, steve albini
Metallica‘s mediocre album Hardwired… to Self-Destruct has sold one million copies in the United States according to the band. Hardwired… to Self-Destruct was self released on the band’s own Blackened Recordings label along with reissues of the band’s older, better 1980s material.
17 CommentsTags: cash grab, hard rock, mainstream metal, metallica, music industry
Recently many of the other “metal” websites, blogs, publications et cetera have been doing articles about the business side of music industry. Unsurprisingly none of these articles had the testicular fortitude to address the ugly reality of the underground metal economy as they are written by either slaves to the machine itself or losers who genuinely believe that they have “careers” in music which heavily depend on acceptance by the community. Since the Death Metal Underground staff bow to no masters social or corporate, we are in the rare position give you the truth in its rawest form. So with absolute disregard for the powers that be in metal, let’s take an honest look inside this machine to see how it really works.
34 CommentsTags: blast beat network, crustfundies, cvltnation, decibel, dumbing-down, economics, economics of metal, funderground, ghost bath, judas iscariot, liturgy, mainstream metal, metal economics, metal industry, metal injection, MetalSucks, music industry, vice magazine
