Lars Ulrich suggests Metallica could follow Radiohead
(Credit: Metallica.com)Lars Ulrich, the combustible drummer of heavy-metal band Metallica and long-time critic of file sharing, has apparently changed some of his views towards the Internet and digital music.
In an interview with Rolling Stone last week, Ulrich said he and his bandmates have only one more album to make under contract to Warner Music Group.
What are their plans for the future?
"We want to be as free (as) players as possible," Ulrich told Rolling Stone during the band's Northern California appearance for Record Store Day. "We've been observing Radiohead and Trent Reznor and in 27 years or however long it takes for the next record, we'll be looking forward to everything in terms of possibilities with the Internet."
No, he's not endorsing peer-to-peer sites, but there's no mistaking what Ulrich meant. The group is considering whether to follow the lead of Radiohead and Reznor, leader of the band Nine Inch Nails. Those acts sent shock waves throughout the music industry over the past six months by distributing albums over the Web without the aid of a record company. They also offered digital versions of the albums for free.
Ulrich is the guy who showed up at the headquarters of file-sharing site Napster in May 2000 clutching the names of more than 300,000 people the band accused of illegally downloading its music. He demanded Napster stop them.
Ulrich and the band became symbols of the music industry's antipiracy efforts. His statements underscore just how much the music industry has begun to accept that digital music (increasingly made available for free) is now an integral part of the business.
Asked by Rolling Stone whether his stance has changed in the past eight years Ulrich responded: "We have FLACs and MP3s for sale. It was never about downloading per se. We have the Vault where you can download shows from twenty years ago for free, full-on and it's been there for years...
"Back in the day there was a much bigger question about on whose terms?" Ulrich continued. "We said, 'Wait a minute, it should be about the artist.' Then all hell broke loose and we sat on the sidelines for a while."
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET.
While I agree that freely sharing copywrited material (ala the original Napster) is bad, their entire catalog could be free and I won't waste one single bit of bandwidth to get any of their music.
Why? At the time they sued to shut down Napster they were one of the most highly paid bands in existance. They whined repeatedly in the public forum how Napster was stealing their revenue. Yes, it was but tell me what 70% of their earnings were for the years 1999-2001 and then see if you think they took a big hit in their wallets.
Bah. No more Metallica for me, evuh
How about an original idea from you guys?
This is what happens when you decide to shoot yourself in the foot by angering the very people that love your music and want it when they want it. You fail to mention that at one of your concerts, you guys tried to attack those of us that were curious about your music, and P2P was the only way to get it, and you guys were immediately booooooded on stage, and your CDs were thrown right back at you and many angry fans trashed em.
How does it feel to be brought down to your knees? How does it feel to be hated?
Instead of you attacking those that were obviously of higher intelligence than you, why didn't instead go after the very people that have screwed you and many musicians and artists within your industry.
I haven't bought another album from your band ever since you went on your hateful anti-fan, anti-technology, anti-internet crusade. Remember, it takes years to earn fans and only SECONDS to lose them.
It is your arrogance that has hurt you, NOT P2P.
The audacity of Lars to put him and his band in the same category as Radiohead.
Metallica is old and boring... only people that listen to them now are a bunch of rednecks in trailer parks and stoner metal kids who don't know any better which will eventually end up being rednecks in trailer parks. Their music is the same old crap, rehashed and reloaded with just new lyrics... they bring nothing new to the table.
I think in between albums they are washing cars and bagging groceries. I think it was the guys from White Snake that's changing oil.
Master of Puppets was the last thing they did worth listening to and that was 20 years ago.
these days feel entitled.
For instance, I stated Metallica has not put out a decent album since Master of Puppets. I own Master of Puppets on CD. I refuse to buy anything else from them until they actually put out something worth listening to, then it might be worth my money.
Then there is the other train here... I own cassettes of Kill 'em All, Ride The Lightening and Garage Days Revisited. I have already purchased those albums, I am not going to go out and buy them again just so I can have a CD to rip for a digital copy. I personally feel that since I have bought those on tape, I should have the right to download and have a digital copy for a digital device. Some people may disagree with me, but that's just the way I think and feel.
There are tons of OOP material out there making it impossible to BUY. How do you purchase something that is out of print? How does the artist get your money then? For example, there is a Starseed's CD I have been looking for for years... it's out of print and the only time I have found it, it was on eBay for $60. I am not paying $60 for a used CD. Call me cheap... go ahead and say I am not a fan or I have no interest in the band, but after months of searching, I finally found the album to download.
The classic example is Disney DVDs. Many are released for a limited time and if you don't get it during that time, you are out of luck. The Little Mermaid was released on DVD way back in the late 90's before DVD players were mainstream. So if you missed out on that purchase because you didn't have a DVD player you had to wait 10 years for it to be released again. This is why there are so many Chinese knock-off pirated DVDs for Disney stuff floating around, or why DVD rips make good examples. You simply cannot buy what is not for sale. That doesn't give us the right to steal it, but is it really stealing when it's not for sale and it's intangible?
I own around 1500 CDs and about 700 DVDs. I will admit that I have downloaded MP3s since the hay day of Napster, but if you put a price on all those CDs and DVDs that I have purchased over the years... those greedy bastards have gotten their fare share of my money. There are artists out there that I will always buy like Radiohead and Coldplay because they are solid acts with flawless CDs where every track is a great track. There's pirated stuff that I have downloaded that made me a fan of artists I never would have heard of which I later bought... Jem, Saltillo, Sunday Munich, Emiliana Torrini. All of them I downloaded on a whim and all of them I now own CDs for.
- Who cares?
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by Jamie_Foster
April 26, 2008 11:42 PM PDT
- The last record Metallica released that was worth paying for was the black album in 1991.
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