The Demography of Metal

THE DEMOGRAPHY OF METAL

A Summary of the Distribution of Metal Bands by Nation and Region
by M. Clauss

Metal is generally thought of as a European-American phenomenon, and this is certainly not without reason, as the numbers below shall demonstrate. However, There is a whole greater world out there full of bands with BC Rich guitars, Peavey amps, and jagged, illegible logos. Herein we will observe where these bands are, and where they are at their most dense.

The data I have collected are from two sources of perhaps not the greatest repute, and indeed they are sources that change with enough frequency that the data, which were collected in December of 2007, could not be said to necessarily reflect the current facts. However, for our purposes here we shall call them sufficient to create an estimate of a snapshot in time, and assume that growth of both general populations and populations of metal bands have been about even since then. The source for the populations of each country is Wikipedia, and the source for the amount of metal bands per country is Encylopedia Metallum. It is worth noting regarding the latter that a lot of bands classified by some as metal are, for a variety of reasons, not seen as meeting the site's criteria for a metal band. As there are, conversely, a number of bands included therein that perhaps do not fit others' criteria for metal, we can assume again that these will cancel each other out.

In the tables below, nations are grouped into regions and ranked by metal bands per capita, least at the bottom and most at the top. Regarding the regions there is of course always going to be some dispute as to where borders fall, especially with an area like the Middle East. By the definition used here, the Middle-East includes Asia Minor and the Caucasus. Oceania is treated as a part of Asia Pacifc, simply because of the lack of countries from the region represented. It is also remarkable that this is the same treatment these countries are given both by FIFA and the BBC. Scandinavia is here treated as a separate region from the rest of Europe, mostly because it is exceptional in its density of metal bands. While some places which are technically under the ownership of another nation are considered as distinct entities here (Greenland, Faroe Islands, Puerto Rico), Svalbard in particular is not, despite the existence of one band purporting to originate there. This is mostly done because the band - Goatskrieg - do not appear to be permanent residents of Svalbard, and may have only claimed such as a promotional gimmick. If this similar method were to be followed, Gwar would not technically be included as residents of any Earthly nation. Another reason for having done this is Svalbard's lack of particular national identity

I also most unfortunately note that some of my numbers here have been lost, and thus the original calculations cannot be confirmed. As such, you will just have to take my word for it that I carefully calculated and double checked all the numbers when putting together this list, as the numbers have most definitely changed for Metal-Archives in the time since then, and cannot be retrieved.

RESULTS

There were, of course, some surprises, as there always are when looking at data like these, and of course some completely unsurprising things. It shouldn't shock anyone that Finland is dense with metal, though it is perhaps odd to note that it is more dense than Norway and Sweden, its more cited metal neighbors. Denmark seems to have a lot of work to do in catching up with its counterparts in peninsular and insular Scandinavia.

In the Americas, we can see that America shows a lack of metality when compared to Canada and, somewhat surprisingly, Chile. All three were miles ahead of their competition, with Brazil bringing a particular disappointing performance despite being home to a number of legendary metal acts.

Not a lot remarkable in Africa or Central Eurasia. More European countries like Armenia and Israel are far more densely metal than places like Iraq and Botswana. Despite this but still unsurprisingly, poor and pastoral Georgia was not high on the list.

I personally assumed India and China would be higher on the list than they are, but the percentages of their huge populations that are impoverished and/or more traditional in lifestyle clearly showed in these results, with these countries being dominated by rich and westernized countries. Still, who would have thought that Brunei is more metal than India?

Some odd names came up on top in Europe. In a place like Liechtenstein, one can simply blame the tiny population - but still, with so few people around, having even four or five metal bands worthy of even mentioning is pretty impressive (one must of course assume) some overlap in membership here). Estonia was a much bigger surprise - how many Estonia metal bands can you name? Though perhaps this is just a symptom of the cultural ties that Estonia share with its cross-Baltic cousins, Finland. Places like Germany and the UK, they've got some 'splainin' to do.

THE NUMBERS

(Note: All countries marked (*) have only one known metal band residing therein, thus the number listed is their total population)

Scandinavia

	Country	1 Band Per x People
1	Finland	2,645
2	Sweden	3,641
3	Norway	5,138
4	Iceland	5,393
5	Denmark	11,137
6	Faroe Islands	48,500*

North and Central America and the Carribean

	Country	1 Band Per x People
1	Canada	21,583
2	USA	29,288
3	Puerto Rico	40,724
4	Greenland	58,000*
5	Panama	75,977
6	Costa Rica	87,607
7	Mexico	125,188
8	El Salvador	149,065
9	Cuba	187,800
10	Netherlands Antilles	192,000*
11	Belize	288,000*
12	Trinidad & Tobago	333,250
13	Honduras	374,000
14	Martinique	399,000*
15	Nicaragua	466,916
16	Dominican Republic	610,000

South America

	Country	1 Band Per x People
1	Chile	25,574
2	Uruguay	51,384
3	Argentina	57,043
4	Brazil	64,072
5	Colombia	99,222
6	Ecuador	113,059
7	Bolivia	128,716
8	Peru	150,016
9	Venezuala	161,736
10	Paraguay	165,594
11	Guyana	738,000*

Africa

	Country	1 Band Per x People
1	Botswana	470,500
2	South Africa	656,445
3	Réunion	784,000*
4	Tunisia	1,032,700
5	Namibia	1,037,000
6	Morocco	1,419,272
7	Algeria	1,539,000
8	Libya	3,080,000
9	Egypt	4,228,160
10	Madagascar	9,841,500
11	Angola	17,024,000*
12	Tanzania	40,454,000*

Middle East (Incl. Asia Minor, the Caucasus, and Central Asia

	Country	1 Band Per x People
1	Armenia	42,885
2	Israel	56,760
3	Bahrain	150,600
4	Lebanon	204,950
5	Turkey	268,376
6	UAE	336,923
7	Jordan	370,250
8	Qatar	420,500
9	Georgia	879,000
10	Kazakhstan	1,285,166
11	Kuwait	1,425,500
12	Turkmenistan	1,655,000
13	Kyrgyzstan	1,772,333
14	Iran	2,157,818
15	Tajikistan	2,245,333
16	Syria	2,847,000
17	Azerbaijan	4,233,500
18	Saudi Arabia	4,947,000
19	Uzbekistan	9,124,000
20	Iraq	14,496,500

South Asia

	Country	1 Band Per x People
1	Sri Lanka	2,757,000
2	Nepal	3,132,888
3	Pakistan	8,996,111
4	Bangladesh	9,916,562
5	India	29,974,769

Asia Pacific

	Country	1 Band Per x People
1	Australia	22,477
2	Singapore	30,176
3	New Zealand	31,247
4	Brunei	55,714
5	Malaysia	93,369
6	Japan	168,271
7	South Korea	421,843
8	Mongolia	438,166
9	Hong Kong	600,500
10	Phillipines	1,068,750
11	Taiwan	1,092,142
12	Thailand	1,427,925
13	Indonesia	1,438,677
14	Laos	2,929,500
15	Vietnam	3,120,535
16	China	18,366,847
17	Myanmar	48,798,000*

Europe and the British Isles

	Country	1 Band Per x People
1	Liechtenstein	5,000
2	Estonia	10,570
3	Luxembourg	10,613
4	Malta	11,628
5	Netherlands	12,812
6	Greece	12,961
7	Czech Rep.	13,070
8	Hungary	13,866
9	Gibralter	14,500
10	Portugal	14,961
11	Germany	14,977
12	Belgium	15,265
13	Switzerland	16,010
14	Austria	16,338
15	Slovenia	17,113
16	Slovakia	17,730
17	Italy	19,123
18	Poland	20,290
19	Croatia	20,990
20	France	23,982
21	Ireland	25,300
22	UK	29,627
23	San Marino	31,000*
24	Spain	31,727
25	Lithuania	33,724
26	Cyprus	33,884
27	Andorra	40,600
28	Bulgaria	43,403
29	Latvia	45,540
30	Serbia	62,789
31	Macedonia	63,687
32	Belarus	65,635
33	Romania	96,567
34	Bosnia & Herzegovina	100,897
35	Ukraine	145,298
36	Moldova	189,700
37	Montenegro	299,000
38	Albania	1,063,333