Most people who don’t follow the metal scene probably first heard of the band Metallica when years back they sued both Napster and their fans for downloading their music on the internet. That act basically killed their career because it pissed off their fans and they’ve not had a hit record since.
Of course the fact that members of Metallica became copyright cops is hilariously ironic if you know their history. Metallica owes its entire career to copyright infringement. There were no radio stations playing their kind of metal back in the 80s. MTV didn’t play it either. The only wide exposure the band received was hardcore fans copying and sharing their demo tapes. One guy would give five tapes to five friends; those five would give five more each; those 25 would give out five each, etc.
Pretty soon they had a huge fan base… large enough that their initial independent label releases made the billboard charts, which is shocking considering the complete lack of major label, radio or video support!
That huge fan base then got the band a major label deal with Elektra Records and the rest, as they say, is history. History, until they turned and spit on their fans by suing them. Good work there you ungrateful idiots.
Well, these idiots still have not learned their lesson. They’ve recently invited the press to preview their new yet to be titled CD. They did not force any journalist to sign any non-disclosure agreements. The press listened and then went back and wrote reviews of what they heard.
The band went ballistic, and without any legal authority, they forced the journalists to pull those reviews. Even though the reviews were favorable.
Well, if Metallica goes ballistic from honest reviews of their CD, they’ll love my review of a CD I’ve never heard and never will hear: Shit Sandwich!
What goes around, comes around…try to sue to stop that! R.I.P. Metallica.
Is this consistent with the Band’s Website posting links to the same blog reviews?
http://www.metallica.com/index.asp?item=600942
Well, ok… so many errors in this report, what the fuck?
-‘The Quietus’ is not the name of the new CD – it’s one of the websites who reviewed the CD (oops)
-Metallica wasn’t the only ones against Napter. Trent Reznor, who everyone is getting a boner over for him releasing his music for free, was against Napster. So people can’t change their minds? Apparently not.
http://tinyurl.com/66tgn4
-Metallica issued a statement yesterday saying it was their management that effed up.
http://www.metallica.com/index.asp?item=600942
[Please use TinyUrl.com for overly long URLs. – ed.]
Metallica was against Napster because “the little guys weren’t getting their dues.” Once Apple came out with the iTunes Music Store, it became, “well, selling our music is an artistic package, and it’s wrong to sell individual tracks.”
Guess what? They’re on iTunes now.
And the band didn’t falter because of Napster – it faltered because they fired Jason.
If Metallica had no legal authority to remove the reviews (or, as indicated, to demand the removal of the reviews), then why did The Quietus cave in and remove the reviews?
Ok, Metallica realized it was stupid, and the reviews are back up. But the correct “legal” response to any request to remove or censor anything – without any legal authority – is: “go f**k yourself.”
Seriously, these guys are more about business than they ever were about rockin’. I wish they would stay away from music and stay away from the Internet.
How can they blame their management for effing up when they paid their management to represent them and their best interest… hmm.
I hate the whole idea these a$$ hats were the start of the process of “mp3’s BAD!” by suing ol’school napster and their users.
The whole industry can burn in hell, starting with Metallica.
“Most people who don’t follow the metal scene probably first heard of the band Metallica when years back they sued both Napster and their fans for downloading their music on the internet. That act basically killed their career because it pissed off their fans and they’ve not had a hit record since.”
What killed their career was the crapped they tried to pass off as metal. They haven’t made an album worth stealing since “And Justice For All”. A symphony orchestra? What a bunch of pusses they turned into…
In other news the sky is blue and water is wet
“Well, ok… so many errors in this report, what the fuck?”
Mmm… “so many errors…” let’s see. You’re right, I did have the title of the CD wrong. That’s certainly one error and I appreciate you pointing it out.
“Metallica wasn’t the only ones against Napter.”
I never said Metallica was the “only ones against Napster.” Thus, no error there.
“Metallica issued a statement yesterday saying it was their management that effed up.”
Once again, there’s no error on my part. Merely because the band changed their minds due to the negative publicity does not change the fact that they’re idiots in the first place. And as others have pointed out, the so called management works for Metallica, not the other way around.
Their St. Anger album sucked big time, specially when they thought that they could pass empty 3kg cans of powdered milk as drums.
#8
I’m all for metal bands with orchestras (long live power metal!) But Metallica in their own arrogance literally screwed up with their version where you could see an entire orchestra batallion and all you could hear is the fu**ing guitars…
It’s funny that this mocks the fact that artists think they should get paid a lifetime for writing a song that took all of a few days.
What really killed Metalica was sobriety.
response to #4:
They failed because they switched (at Newstead’s prompting) from Ian Rasmussen and DefJam records to Bob Rock. Newstead was a Bob Rock plant who was there to get Metallica to go more mainstream. The first album they did with Rock was the black one and you all know the rest of the story.
They failed because they suck.
The stopped being relevant long, long ago. Now, they are merely a punchline.
Honestly, I can’t think of a single person who has said to me in oh, I don’t know, the last 5 years ‘I wish metallica would come out with a new CD’.
These asshats need to go crawl back in their cave and be happy they’ll never have to hold real jobs in their lives.
Now, I know about Metallica. I’ve kept up, and yes, the band has been… faltering. Also, kudos on the reviewer about how they started. Pwnsome punchline there.
They got greedy. They stopped caring. They burnt out. Not entirely their fault, I’m sure the fact they had to pump out more beats to satisfy their labels could have some part of the blame.
But in the end, they exploded. Then they expelled whatever was left and died. Much like the stars in the universe.
On a related note, although I feel sad System Of A Down broke up into three different projects. But I guess it was for the best, quitting while they were ahead. You see, metalllca didn’t do that. look at where they are now; Just more material for vh1’s Behind the Music
SN, To be fair to Metallica (This opinion piece is rather one sided) while they jaded many of their fans, the Napster thing did NOT kill their career, their next album, since the Napster thing, St. Anger went to number 1 in 30 countries.