jon wrote:I 2nd Noel Gallagher. I didn’t like his first single in 2011 the death of you and me and wrote him off. Years later with Apple Music at my disposal, I turned it on not expecting much. And his first 2 albums are great. They sold pretty well I think about a million. His last one in 2017 was good but not as good. Those are probably some of the last rock albums that ever sell well. The wretched vampire weekend had a string of dark near platinum albums. Oh well if they don’t selll as well in the future not too mad
Don't know how you feel about them, but The Black Keys had two multi-platinum albums and a gold album from 2010-2014 - whatever you may think of them, they grinded for almost a decade before they reached that level. Metallica had a platinum album in 2016 (closer to 3 million units if you count worldwide sales) and I imagine the next one will also go platinum with the fanbase that they still command. Those two bands and Nickelback (not a fan, but they don't deserve the level of hate they get either) are the only straight-up rock bands that I can find on the top 100 selling albums since 2010. After that, it gets shaky - the only other traditional bands I see are Coldplay, Maroon 5, Mumford and Sons, the Lumineers, Imagine Dragons, Twenty One Pilots and fun. and I don't know how many of those could be classified as rock. I'm listening to a Lumineers song since I've never heard anything by them before and it's actually quite nice, but it's more on the folk spectrum then anything else.
At this point, I think the best career a rock band can probably hope for is a similar to the one a band like Clutch has created for themselves -build up a loyal following over the years/decades, play to 3-5k people on your own headlining tours and more on festivals, have your own record label and sell enough units and merch to live comfortably - but no one who isn't an established arena-level draw from the 90s or earlier is going to make outrageous money again.