Slipknot guitarist Jim Root spoke with The Morning Call and gave the following rather grim assessment of one aspect of the bands financial realities:
“You don’t even know are we going to have a career. Are we going to be able to sell records? Are we going to have a label? I mean, labels are [shutting down] all the time. It takes like pop and rap to keep these labels going because those are the only people that are buying records anymore.
To have a No. 1 with 130,000 copies sold [the first-week sales of “.5: The Gray Chapter“] is, you know, I remember when we first started selling records, in order to have a No. 1, you’d have to sell at least a half a million if not more, for the rock side of things. And now it’s a fraction of that.
So it kind of really shows you the state of where everything’s at. I don’t put too much into that anyway because we don’t see a penny off of record sales and we never have. For us it’s all about touring.”
