There's no doubt that the music world has changed since its bustling heyday of the late '90s. Downloading and streaming have changed the game, making it harder for acts to sustain financially, and it's something that Crematory drummer Markus Jullich has discussed in depth in a new social media posting, where he posits the real possibility that the band's Oblivion album may be their final one and their tour may be the last given the lack of financial support from music fans.

"The end of Crematory? Will Oblivion be the last studio album and the tour in May the final one?," the drummer asks in an eyebrow-raising opening. "Have you fans get off your lazy asses and start buying tickets for the announced shows. The pre-sales are horrible and we will cancel the tour completely, if the numbers don't increase radically."

Jullich adds, "The most important thing is, that you buy our new CD and double vinyl edition, cause when I look at our sales statistics I could start throwing up! Nowadays we are selling way more downloads and streams then we sell the original products, and this will be the death for all bands, cause you hardly get any money from this shit compared to the CD compensation. So as a matter of fact, a band will hardly make enough money to put a good sounding album on the market."

He continues, "The worst is, that streaming on itunes, spotify, deezer, napster and all the other bullshit platforms doesn't pay out for the band at all. Our last album Monument had 1.5 million streams and we don't even sell 1 percent of that in original vinyl or CD products."

The drummer says the financial landscape given those figures is not great not only for his band, but for others as well. "This can't go on like this anymore! It's not only Crematory who is suffering from all that, but only we have the balls to stand up and tell you the truth," says Jullich. "Wake up you Metalheads and start honoring the value of real music and come back to buying the products. We don't want music just getting wasted and being stored on hard drives, usb-sticks, SD cards in miserable mp3 quality. We hope you understand how important that is to us. Because of this, we will give you something special with the new album Oblivion, so you think twice before you buy the shitty download or the even worse stream. Every CD and vinyl LP comes with a 10 € merchandise voucher, that you can use on our concerts, or in our merchandise-shop at the Crematory website. That makes every CD or LP including the voucher even cheaper than a download and you get a great digipack with booklet, lyrics, pictures and poster."

He concludes, "Please dear fans, buy CD´s and LP´s and forget the downloads, cause otherwise there wont be another Crematory album. Don't make Oblivion the final album and give us your support on the tour. Start buying tickets now, so we can have great shows together. Even after 27 years of Crematory we are still hungry to keep going, but all that is in your hands."

The new Crematory album, Oblivion, is due on April 13, with the band's tour starting on April 27 and running through all of May in Germany. The first new song from the album, "Salvation," is expected to arrive this Friday (March 16). You can pre-order the disc here and dates for the band's upcoming tour can be found here.

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