Tales from the Jugular
How Many Hard Rock/Metal Bands Are There?
By: Eric Compton & Frank Hill
Published: Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Tales From The Jugular - How Many Hard Rock/Metal Bands Are There?
A question was raised here lately at Maximum Metal that we think deserved to be given
an answer:
How many Hard Rock/Metal bands are there across the world?
We faced this daunting challenge like the pure metal scientists we are--with our own
decades of dealing in the land of Metaldom, our instincts, some heresay and guesswork.
This does not count a bunch of people who get together to bang out some old Sabbath riffs;
we're talking decent indy bands (at least developed enough to have a demo CD) with
somewhat of a local or larger following.
The U.S. figure is based upon the noted number of locally touring club bands (10) within a
couple of standard sized city areas (100,000 residents) that our staff has lived in or
near. The Euro/Latin American figures are based more on word of mouth from fans, venues
and music insiders that note a stronger following of metal in those areas. Asia and
African amounts are looked at more from the lack of publically availible metal and the
strictness of differing governments such as China, Russia and Japan. Oceania is just a
flat out shot in the dark.
As an example, based on our estimation of 10 U.S. bands per 100,000 people (.0001) it
equals out to about 30,000+ hard rock/metal bands in the U.S. alone (300,000,000 X .0001)
OUR BREAKDOWN
Census Data Year 2005
World Population (Rounded)= 6,453,600,000
Africa (pop. 887,900,000)
1 band per 10,000,000 people (.0000001) = 89 bands
Asia (total pop. 3,917,500,000)
Specific Breakdown:
China (pop. 1,315,800,000)
1 band per 10,000,000 people (.0000001) = 132 bands
India (pop. 1,103,300,000
3 bands per 10,000,000 people (.0000003) = 331 bands
Russia (pop. 143,200,000)
1 bands per 100,000 people (.00001) = 1,432 bands
Japan (pop. 128,100,000)
2 bands per 100,000 people (.00002) = 2,562 bands
Europe (pop. 724,722,000)
12 bands per 100,000 people (.00012) = 86,966 bands
Latin-America (pop. 558,280,000)
4 bands per 100,000 people (.00004) = 22,331 bands
Northern America (pop. 332,000,000)
10 bands per 100,000 people (.0001) = 33,200 bands
Oceania (pop. 32,998,000)
3 bands per 100,000 people (.00003) = 990 bands
Total Hard Rock/Metal Bands Across the World = 148,033
Our rounded off estimation of the number of Hard Rock/Metal bands across the
world:
150,000 Hard Rock/Metal Bands
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