Michael Jackson was 10000 times a worse person and look what happened when he went.

1. Napster was stealing. I’m on Lars’ side with this. Although I was a fan of Napster I always bought music I thought deserved it (a lot of it isn’t these days which the labels refuse to accept is part of their demise not the stealing itself). Having livemetallica.com has allowed Metallica to choose how their art is handled, which was the only reason for their beef with Napster.

2. The only issue I have with the single-track downloads they’ve recently announced is that they’re only MP3s whereas the full gigs are MP3 or FLAC. I’m one of those people who’ll never pay for downloadable MP3s that have all the essence sucked out of them during the compression process. Sure I’ll have MP3/AAC on my iPod but always have the original to go back to. Why people would pay for poor quality I’ll never know. Hopefully download sites will eventually FLAC downloads, be it at a higher price maybe, but at least offer it. And Apple, especially, offer support for FLAC and/or other uncompressed formats on media players instead of holding the world to ransom and supporting only things that they can sell and make a quick buck out of.

3. I believe livemetallica.com started in around 2003/04 and all shows that you pay for are only since then not, as the quote states, from 1982. Metallica offer for FREE a lot of shows from 1982-2003 as MP3s only. I think Disturbed started offering shows for download only a couple of years ago, 2007ish maybe?? but definitely not before Metallica.

Allow me to rephrase. It was never wrong of them to be opposed to stealing, it was stupid of them, the RIAA, and the rest of the industry to spend so much time swatting flies instead of working to find an acceptable alternative. It took them 9 years to figure out that they should be selling their music online? Making shows available online? Making anything and EVERYTHING available, ONLINE? Had Metallica lead the way into this age, along with the support of the record companies we may be living in a very different music industry today.

There is very real data on how Spotify users go on to BUY more music, and how their “illegal” downloading habits have decreased as a result of having music instantly accessible on a whim. If Spotify were available in North America, you can bet I’d be all over that shit.

I hope that helped clarify. I never meant to be an advocate of stealing, but meant it more as being afraid to embrace technology and leverage it for gain, rather than try to push it back and keep it at bay. History has also shown that to be a futile effort.

Are you sure you fully understood the intricacies of that issue? This is something over which they as the artists/creators have complete control. With Napster, they had none. With LiveMetallica, they can decide whether or not they want to charge money for a given download, and decide how much. With Napster, those decisions were entirely out of their hands.

In the case of Napster, Metallica was correct. Napster was stealing. So I’m not really sure why that would be something to which they never should have been opposed, or why this, as something totally different, qualifies as “finally embracing.”

I subscribe to Lefsetz’s blog, and while there are a certain number of articles I feel he’s not entirely on the ball with, and he does seem to have some weird taste in music, one thing he is absolutely 100% on the mark with is using the Internet to further a career and satisfy the fans.

Granted Metallica doesn’t *need* to do this per se given their gargantuan popularity, but it does still satisfy the core of the fans, the ones you should care the most about. You never used to be able to get Metallica CDs through those mail order clubs, as their philosophy was to support your local economy and the mom and pop record stores that are struggling to survive. That’s all well and good and can be appreciated, but with the CD format hurdling towards oblivion, adopting online sales and distribution at an individual track level should nowadays be the first step that any new act takes. I’d go so far as to say that music should be free, but we’re not there yet. Spotify has some real potential though.

I live in a small town, and we don’t even have a music store. I’ve got to drive to the nearest town, a half hour away just to visit a wal-mart music section, which is lackluster at best, and given their censorship issues in the past, I won’t support that. That, or a real canadian superstore (do they even sell music?). So granted I order my stuff online if I want physical copies. I haven’t yet jumped into itunes because I still like having something I can hold in my hand, but at some point I’ll adopt that too.

Really though it all comes down to customer service. Giving the fans what they want. Give them all kinds of content, and the true fans will eat it up. They’ll keep begging for more.

i like how there are old shows for free, downloading giants stadium in 94 atm

/rimshot

I would have asked for his number if this was going on. aha

If I did, I could think of better uses to put them to than to give them to you.

Carry on.