I was doing some more analysis on Encyclopaedia Metallum data, as I seem to end up doing one way or another most weeks, and it occurred to me to add in country populations so I could do bands per capita. This is not a rigorous statistic, since for some regions of the world it probably says more about the EM contributor-base than it does about the actual distributions of musicians, but the top of the list was pretty striking:
1. Finland - 471 bands per million people
2. Sweden - 330
3. Norway - 239
4. Iceland - 189
5. Denmark - 113
Yes, I have rediscovered the existence of Scandinavia statistically!
For comparison:
28. United States - 49
29. United Kingdom - 46
And way down at the very end (among countries with at least 10 bands, at any rate):
87. China - 0.097
88. India - 0.068
There are a fair number of places that have, as far as EM knows, no metal bands at all, but I've got all the populations in place, so if anybody starts a band on Pitcairn or Wallis et Futuna next week, I'm ready.
(Interesting, too, that Finland leads the world in both metal bands and Winter Olympic medals per capita.)
(In the interest of accuracy, I should note that if you include all countries, Liechtenstein actually comes in third with 251 bands per million people (by which we mean 9 bands for ~36,000 people). Liechtenstein is one of only two countries in the world where there are more Gothic Metal bands than any other style. The other place is Kuwait, where Gothic Metal bands outnumber all other styles, put together, by a commanding margin of 1 to 0. The band is called Nocturna.)
1. Finland - 471 bands per million people
2. Sweden - 330
3. Norway - 239
4. Iceland - 189
5. Denmark - 113
Yes, I have rediscovered the existence of Scandinavia statistically!
For comparison:
28. United States - 49
29. United Kingdom - 46
And way down at the very end (among countries with at least 10 bands, at any rate):
87. China - 0.097
88. India - 0.068
There are a fair number of places that have, as far as EM knows, no metal bands at all, but I've got all the populations in place, so if anybody starts a band on Pitcairn or Wallis et Futuna next week, I'm ready.
(Interesting, too, that Finland leads the world in both metal bands and Winter Olympic medals per capita.)
(In the interest of accuracy, I should note that if you include all countries, Liechtenstein actually comes in third with 251 bands per million people (by which we mean 9 bands for ~36,000 people). Liechtenstein is one of only two countries in the world where there are more Gothic Metal bands than any other style. The other place is Kuwait, where Gothic Metal bands outnumber all other styles, put together, by a commanding margin of 1 to 0. The band is called Nocturna.)