How Metallica conquered the world, gig by gig
The ‘time lapse’ video below shows all the gigs that Metallica have played since 1982. By integrating Googlemaps API with the city data I scraped, I was able to obtain the latitude and longitude of each gig and animate this data in Tableau. Even though most gigs have been in North America and Europe, you can see how they have performed in most continents, especially in recent years.
How Metallica conquered the world, tour by tour
Metallica have toured significantly; since 1982 they’ve embarked on almost 30 tours. These tours are often carried out in order to support the release of a new album but some are more ‘ad-hoc’. The music industry has seen album sales suffering for sometime now and have generally been in decline, so supporting an album with heavy touring / live performance is essential for any artist or band to maintain some kind of consistent revenue generation. It also provides a chance to sell lots of merchandise - again, a key way that bands can make money.
Some of their very early tours consisted primarily of smaller/club style gigs where they would often play to hardly anyone, for instance this gig from very early on - likely to be the ‘Kill ‘em All’ tour in the early eighties.
Whereas some later tours Metallica embarked on were vast. These arena tours that traversed the globe, backed by impressive levels of production and lasting for literally years, would find the band playing play to tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of fans at a time. The clip below is when they played Monsters of Rock in Moscow to a rumoured 1.6 million.
The ‘time lapse’ video below shows when each tour took place and where in the world the tour travelled to.
The interactive dashboard below presents the same tour data in a more exploratory format. Use the ‘Highlight Tour’ option on the right to explore the different tours Metallica have had. If you hover over each gig, you can also inspect other gig attributes including the date of the gig, the venue and information on the setlist for that specific gig.
How long did each tour last for?
Some of the longer lasting tours were also when Metallica would play longer sets. The infamous ‘Wherever I may Roam’ tour is a great example of this; 229 dates and a median set length of 22 tracks.
How frequently do Metallica play live?
Metallica are fairly old now - they’re just a little younger than my parents so are likely touching their sixties. Subsequently we can see that over time, Metallica’s touring frequency has dialled back slightly. At their peak they were playing a gig almost every other day. What is interesting is that the average cost of a ticket to see Metallica has been creeping up each tour. I don’t have the data to hand but having seen them myself five times in total now, I can vouch that they aren’t the cheapest act around and have been getting more expensive to experience.
What festivals and special events have Metallica played at?
Metallica have played at all kinds of festivals all over the world. Sonisphere is the big one - 25 gigs since 2009. Sonisphere is very much a global event and many of the gigs they had at Sonisphere were part of a tour.
Are there specific cities where Metallica are likely to play?
Given that they originate from California, it’s no surprise to see that Metallica have played a lot at the major cities in the US. London is the most popular city outside of the US as is Paris and Copenhagen.
What albums are Metallica most likely to play live?
Tracks from the earlier albums (1983 - 1991) are likely to be found on any Metallica set list, at any point in time. Whilst they’re far from becoming a stale ‘Greatest Hits’ band, you will definitely hear some fan favourites when you see them live.
What tracks are Metallica most likely to play live?
The sheet below has several tabs where you can see which tracks have gathered the most (and least) plays throughout their career. I’ve even broken this out by tour as well for more context.
Your turn!
I’ve included the scraped and engineered data on my GitHub. I welcome anyone who also has an unhealthy relationship with Metallica to do their own exploratory analysis on this - the more the merrier! If you have any questions about any of this project and want to learn a little more about how it works, please, feel free to get in touch with me. My details are on the ‘Contact’ tab in the navigation pane above.
Until then my friends!
