#though i assure you the entertainment industry like film TV book etc where effected similarly

[frienderbender]

tell us about how dethklok has affected the entertainment industry, mr bender.

oh man ok you’ve put me on the spot but that’s ok this was probably a long overdue essay anyway haha

so i feel like there’s several things to keep in mind when discussing the music industry in-universe. for one, the worldbuilding of mtl is set up to be like “everything was the exact same as we knew it until the 2000s* when dethklok became the biggest band in the world”

*we don’t really have an exact year or date but all things considered, some time in the 2000s makes the most sense. i’d guesstimate somewhere around 2002-2004 at the latest.

also quick side note before i start: a lot of this is gonna be up to personal interpretation of the timeline. personally how i see it: mid-90s, dethklok is formed (magnus-era), probably some time around 1998 or so, The Stabbing Incident occurs and he’s kicked out, several months later (perhaps into 1999), they hold auditions and toki joins. by the year 2000, they’re starting to make successful music, and from around 2002 onward they’re million, billion, trillionaires, whatever you wanna call it. because by season 1 (2006) they’re credited as the 12th(?) largest economy in the world. that’s still gonna take Some Time, and i’m trying to be modestly realistic with that growth. if you wanna interpret them as literally becoming trillionaires overnight, go for it! feel free to disregard what i’m about to talk about timeline-wise.

SO. with that outta the way, let’s talk about the music industry in the 2000s. i think the biggest distinction in this era was the fact that getting your music digitally was becoming much more common and would soon become the standard. you have the ipod and itunes coming out, napster is letting people exchange music files, and technology itself was advancing so quickly that you could easily store soooo much more music than you could before. so really, dethklok kinda came out at the perfect time: music was more accessible than ever for consumers, and the ways people could share and communicate about music (forums, instant messaging, illegal file sharing, etc) made word spread so much faster. not only that, but by like 2006, 2007 you had a bunch of music-only stores beginning to shut down because of big box stores like best buy. and consider that through the lens of dethklok’s fame: if your music-only store can only carry so many copies, and you can only get so many at a time, it only makes sense you’re going to be driven out by the bigger store because they buy more and can generally restock faster (and inevitably be in more locations). if i want this hot new dethklok album, i can’t wait two weeks for you to get a new shipment of a couple of them: i’m going to the best buy across the street because they have wayyyy more in stock. hell, there’s even a joke about this in season 3 where the record store closes down…..because it’s a record store (tho they credit it with being because people are illegally downloading which….sure whatever, but historically-speaking most smaller music stores were shut down because of places like walmart).

also this isn’t even touching on the fact that by this point a lot of artists were relying on merchandising to make up for the loss of income, and if there’s one thing dethklok loves…….it’s their branding. thank you charles. dethklok is getting more popular by the MINUTE and so ofc they’re selling all sorts of shit, and we see how arguably “out of ideas” they are by the time the series actually starts (snowcones…..).

ANYWAY SO WITH ALL THAT SAID. how can we assume dethklok permanently changed the industry? well for starters, they oversaturated the market, and while that’s typically seen as a negative thing, in dethklok’s case that’s what the people wanted. that’s all the general public wanted. you can see it in how so many people are dressed, how everyday brands like coffee chains have changed their look to better fit the “dethklok metal” look. it’s become the new standard for what the general masses want. with that in mind, you can imagine how difficult it may be now to be an artist who performs literally any other genre. fingers crossed you know how to scream into a mic, otherwise you might want to start job searching. and unfortunately you can’t apply at the record store, because dethklok’s albums sped up the decline of music-only stores altogether. and even if you are an artist who can still release music, good luck getting anyone to talk about it. for every one other-genre-specific forum or blog, there’s dozens—maybe hundreds—for dethklok. honestly the luckiest fate you could get is ending up in some rockstar camp (magnus and the other counselors), or maybe rebranding yourself as something new entirely (rikki kixx), or if you’re really lucky you can get dethklok to sponsor or collaborate with you in some capacity (SnB, rockzo/zazz blammymatazz). and this isn’t even touching on music award shows; those died by the early 2000s. what’s the point? dethklok’s gonna win everything anyway. maybe if we’re feeling nice we can hope there’s a separate music award show for everyone who’s not dethklok.

if nothing else i hope this can really help illustrate just how dystopic this world is for every other musician. like it’s a nightmare. but that’s what makes the worldbuilding so fucking fascinating, and why i find myself very attached to rikki of all people. cool stuff, and it’s fun to compare it to how things are now, or how you think dethklok would fare in the 2020s. is toki releasing tiktok dances with their newest songs? i don’t wanna think about it.

oh, and those not-so-legal music sharing sites i mentioned earlier? yeahhh those are eradicated by the mid-2000s, on account of everyone who ever used one……mysteriously disappearing. you want dethklok? you better pay up.