For those who experienced the fight against Napster more than a decade ago, last week's appearance of Napster's Sean Parker and Metallica's Lars Ulrich was a surreal experience.
In the days of the original Napster, Ulrich spearheaded the artist's effort to bring down the P2P music download platform. More than 10 years after they opened fire against each other in a battle that had enabled virtually unlimited piracy on one side and an overwhelmed music industry on the other, Parker and Ulrich reflected on the past at an industry event.
According to VentureBeat, both showed that Napster was never about money, but about the question who is in control of the music content. "It was about being in your bubble and controlling the access," Ulrich said. "If Napster had approached us first and given us options, it might have been a little different. Instead, control was taken away from us. It turned into, ‘If you fuck with us, we’ll fuck with you.’ Instead of Napster versus Metallica, it became Metallica versus its fans."
On the other side, Parker noted that "back in 1999, we were depicted as these greedy pirates who supported the wholesale stealing of music," Parker said. "We just wanted to make music more free. Freedom, not free as in theft."
Napster was the first major sign that the usage of music would have to change and accommodate the technology that was evolving around it. As both sides have made compromises, it now seems that the music industry may be ready to embrace the changes that affect music: Ulrich said that artists would have to recognize how " the younger generation experiences and interacts with music now," Venture beat reported. "The ones that are left out don’t have children," Ulrich said. "I have kids and they interact with music so much differently than we did."
If Ulrich has come to this conclusion, there is a good chance that the rest of music industry has as well.
who would EVER want a death magnetic branded headphones? what will they do, make the music sound worse than the producers?
for one, control of the music.
walmart stopped being as important, (it was 70-90% of your sales prior to digital)
bands cant pad albumes anymore for money (how many cds have you bought where you like one or 2 songs?)
and really, bands dont need to sign with a major label to go places anymore, but admitting it is easier to work with them than outside of them.
because back than we were legally allowed to make backups of our purchased goods, as tapes if you remember, wear the hell out after even the first play. i believe the dmca stopped allowing us to make personal backups.
but metalica, back than, came off as a sell out band who was only in it for the money, and that image hurt them a hell of allot more than if their music was freely distributed.
they were quoted as saying how much they despised the whole music video making process and that if they ever made another, they were selling out. so for the second music video they made, that is when they sold out completely, i believe if im right they also changed their style of music to be more mainstream too, so some people call that the moment they sold out also.
Metallica have always made great music, I have never used napster and own every CD they have released and seen them live (great concert - 2010). I could not care less about about the something that happened 12 years ago and as a fan who loves holding the CD and artwork, I could not see what the fuss was about.
I dont think metallica was trying to rip fans off. I dont see how people complain. Want the new CD, buiy it like everyone else (maybe that makes me old fasion).
they sued a 4 year old and a dead grandma
instead of going after the people resonsible for uploading it, they went after teh fans who got it in a time when piracy was just going mainstream enough for everyone to know what it is, but not reconize it as stealing.
there is a major disconnect from indie bands who want their music out by any means necessary, piracy be damned, and people like metalica who heard people pirated their music and went straight to layers.
yea... i lose all respect for metalica as a band after that and it did sully their past work knowing what douches they were. some people can look past their stains, but sadly i cant.
and i could never buy their recent stuff ans the loud war killed any quality that came from it, and by some mistake guitar hero got the non loud edited versions of their songs from i believe death magnetic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRyIACDCc1I
that alone made me not want to buy any of their music any more... let along the fact i believe their best is behind them.
back than the studies werent around, but now... piracy tends to boost sales.
you can look at japan for a more real world example, when they put the law forward to criminalize piracy with what, 2 years in jail, music sales also fell quite a bit.
not advocating piracy, just pointing out it isn't satan.
oh yeah, you showed metallica they were wrong by continuing to steal music.
can you have less respect for artists if you steal their product day in and day out?
who are you into now? i hope they have plenty of alternative forms of revenue.