Metallica is hosting its third Helping Hands Concert & Auction on Friday, December 16. The show is taking place at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. However, fans will have the chance to livestream the show from home.
The band announced on its website the concert and will be streaming live on Paramount+ and will be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel. Additionally, the concert will be simulcasted on Pluto and MTV’s YouTube channel. The livestream kicks off at 5:30 PM PST/8:30 PM EST.
The auction portion of the event begins on December 5. All proceeds from the auction and the concert will go to Metallica’s All Within My Hands charity. The band’s charity supports a number of causes from food insecurity to funding efforts for trade education programs.
The previous Helping Hands Concert & Auction took place in November 2020. That event was a livestream event due to the coronavirus pandemic. The livestream raised over $1.3 million.
‘Metallica’ & The 9 Other Best-Selling Albums During the SoundScan Era
Metallica released their self-titled fifth studio album on August 12, 1991. Affectionately known as “The Black Album,” the LP became a game-changer for the band. It also had a massive impact on the music industry at large thanks to the game-changing technology then known as SoundScan, which premiered on March 1, 1991.
Per a feature piece from Billboard, “SoundScan, which is now known as MRC Data, measured album sales as they happened — stores scanned bar codes at the checkout register — and over the next few months [after its launch] it upended the conventional music business wisdom about what sold, as well as when and how. It revealed the popularity of several genres — alternative rock, country, hip-hop, harder metal — that had been seen as commercially marginal compared to bread-and-butter pop-rock bands.”
Basically, SoundScan provided real-time data of what was actually selling at record stores and other retailers, and it has provided proof of Metallica’s popularity.
How popular are the metal icons? “The Black Album” is the biggest selling record in the United States since the launch of SoundScan.
Metallica, however, has some very unique company on the list of the biggest selling albums of the SoundScan era. Scroll through the gallery below to see which titles join them in the top ten.
