Don’t Worry About Metallica’s Finances. They’re Just Fine.

I’m sure you’ve been panicked about Metallica’s financial situation.  After all, they’ve been telling us how much record sales suck due to piracy and the cratering of the CD as a format.  Who can forget Kirk Hammett worrying to Rolling Stone “The cycles of taking two years off don’t exist anymore. We were able to do that because we had record royalties coming in consistently. Now you put out an album, and you have a windfall maybe once or twice but not the way it used to be — a check every three months.”

Jeez, who knew they had it so rough?

But let’s be real.  Their Black album has been selling at a rate of 2,000 copies a week forever and is now about to break the 16 million mark in the US alone.  Add up all their other album sales and you’ll find that Metallica has sold 54,260,000-ish records in their career.  And that’s just in America.  Only Garth Brooks (69,520,000) and the Beatles (65,500,000) have sold more.  (The Beatles are actually #1 by a LONG shot, but Soundscan numbers–the only truly accurate sales figures we have–only go back to 1991.)

(Via Metal Injection)