A recent study conducted by Spotify has given metal fans a reason to throw up those devil horns with pride. Here's the crux of the matter -- Metal fans are the world's most loyal listeners and crushing it via the music streaming service.

According to Spotify's insights, the researchers identified the "core" artists that are the most central to each genre, starting with the major acts, on a global level. Then they followed by doing the same thing with local genres in various countries around the world. Spotify then divided the number of streams each core artist had by their number of listeners to determine which genre generated the most loyalty.

As you might expect, the "core" artists included such names as Metallica, Slayer, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Pantera and Anthrax along with acts like Sepultura and Cradle of Filth. In a majority of the countries, metal ranks among the top 10 genres and was top 5 in most cases. The study also cites metal as the most loyal genre in such countries as Portugal and Sweden (technically Swedish metal and Swedish punk rank above metal in Sweden).

As can be seen in the graph generated below, metal surpasses pop in terms of the most loyal listeners, while folk, country and rock follow closely behind.

Spotify

The results likely come as no surprise to metalheads as they have shown staunch support of the bands listed above for years. They buy the music, see the shows, hoard the merchandise and we all know how popular the designs of metal t-shirts have remained over the years. Not to mention, metal enthusiasts typically take pride in their love of the genre and will sample acts in the genre repeatedly before dipping too far out of the pool musically.

So pump those fists, rock on and keep clicking "play," metal fans. You're helping to keep the metal genre going strong.