The management for Metallica are spinning the numbers released by Billboard on Metallica’s album sales after they put their music on Spotify.
Metallica. image by Ros O'Gorman
The magazine took a look at the band’s album sales for the four weeks before Christmas from 2008 through 2012 and found that the numbers dropped 15% in the week after December 6 when Metallica’s music was first made available for streaming and 35% in the second week.
Cliff Burnstein of Q Prime who manages Metallica has told the New York Times that it’s nothing to worry about. “There is a point at which there could be 100 percent cannibalization, and we would make more money through subscriptions services. We calculate that point at approximately 20 million worldwide subscribers.”
For reference, Spotify only has five million paying subscribers worldwide but they are growing both in countries where they are already established and are expanding into new regions.
