The Weird Global Appeal of Heavy Metal

In late August, Sony Music Entertainment bought Century Media Records, a leading metal and hard rock label, for an undisclosed sum. Universal Music Group last month bought metal label Candlelight. Aside from record sales and concert tickets, merchandise is a big part of metal culture—especially T-shirts.
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Metal festivals are proliferating—there are some 50 world-wide. Dubai’s “Rock Fest” and “Desert Rock Festival” events have drawn metal-heads from across the Middle East.
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Over 100,000 metal bands from about 150 countries have listings on Encyclopaedia Metallum, an online archive. That is roughly double the figure from 2007. 
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Driving metal’s growth are intensely loyal fans with unusual consumer habits. Many metal-heads still collect physical products, such as CDs. Younger fans connect not just to older bands like Black Sabbath and Death, but also established groups from all over the world like Brazil’s Sepultura, Germany’s Rammstein and Sweden’s Opeth.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-weird-global-appeal-of-heavy-metal-1455819419