Canis Firebrand

I know that Metallica made quite a stance with their outspokenness regarding napster and how they would never have their music on such formats.

I noticed today that iTunes had a new banner up.

The entire Metallica catalog up for purchase/download.

I know you have to pay for iTunes songs/downloads. But, from there, things get murky with what people do with their music.

You could burn to a cd and trade with friends, etc. Certainly things that Metallica once said they don't approve of.

Has the rampant success of iTunes changed their mind some?

Either way, it is quite a shock to see their music up for purchase/download on iTunes.

I'm sure it will make a lot of people happy.

Then I'm also sure there will be those that feel this is just a result of greed, etc.

Still, kind of neat to see more and more success in getting music up on iTunes.

DVD Josh

I think the band is trying to be relevant again.

Decadance

Or not be poor again. Either or.

GuessWho

you can burn & trade real CDs too... so that's nothing new

Canis Firebrand

True, but they seemed to bring it more to light in the napster hoopla.

SeekOnce

I think it was weirder that they didn't have their shit on iTunes after the whole Napster thing in the first place. They bitched about how people were downloading their tunes illegally yet didn't have any available for purchase. Brilliant.

All I wanna say is "Finally".

DVD Josh

If they don't remaster them, it's hardly worth it.

Canis Firebrand

I don't think the songs are remastered. But each album has some bonus tracks. It looked like they were live versions of songs on the album.

Jason

Well, they still found a way to be dicks. The bonus tracks are "album only". So instead of metallica fans with the complete discography spending 8 bucks on the new shit, they'll be spending zero bucks, and will feel justified when stealing them from P2P. Good job, douchebags!

paulringodaman

The band hates trading/stealing music........how ironic, they were a band who got famous by people trading and "stealing" their records back in the early 80's....Assholes

DVD Josh

Dave Matthews syndrome.

Canis Firebrand

I've seen the "album only" thing on a number of cds for download. Is it the artist that designates which will be tracks you can't purchase unless you buy the whole album? Or is the label/studio? Or does iTunes itself decide?

I've always wondered that.

Tarantino

I hate Metallica.

= J

nodeerforamonth

Metallica NEVER had a problem with releasing stuff on mp3. THEY wanted to dictate what is released and how. They did not want the fans releasing unhead studio demos to each other via Napster. Nor did they want their officially released stuff available for free.

Yeah, I'm angry at them for ruining Napster, but I can see their point of view.

That being said, the new Slayer album is GREAT!

Gunshy

I heartily agree with remastering older recordings to give them greater fidelity but, unless the originals were truly awful, does it really matter much when talking about lossy format MP3 (or whatever iTunes format you get) when buying tunes from Apple? For remasters, give me the hard-copy anyday - actually that goes for pretty much all music (bonafied CD junky yet).

-Gunshy

GuruTwo

Dave Matthews Band has always supported non-profit show trading, when they cracked down it was on bootlegs being sold in stores.

Why should some guy with a tape recorder from 1986 and a modern copy of Photoshop get to slap a professional-looking cover on something that sounds like shit and sell it in a store alongside official releases while the actual performers/writers of the music don't get any money for it?

paulringodaman

You know, I'm not a musician, but all these successful guys caring about a couple of concert bootlegs is stupid. All they need to play is A SHOW to recoup all the money. Alienating fans is much worse in the long run for $$$.

The Bus

Fans are the ones alienated when they need to spend $30 on some half-assed bootleg CD in a store. DMB still allows trading (afaik). They want you to get it for free, not pay for it. This is the band that was OK with an entire unreleased album leaking. Then they re-recorded it and sold gangbusters.

SideShow

I'm not a huge Metallica fan but I was wondering about this too when I saw the banner on iTunes. Maybe someone finally explained to Lars that people PAY for these particular downloads? People lose so much (more) common sense when they get super disgustingly rich...

mndtrp

I wouldn't mind the bonus live tracks, but I'm not going to rebuy the albums. I've still got my Binge and Purge, so that will work for the time being.

Mordred

I've seen Lars say publically for years that he was embarassed by the whole Napster fiasco and realizes it was a big mistake. If you paid attention at the time, it was fairly apparent that Metallica was being used by the RIAA's lawyers. They certainly didn't understand the technology at all, or what was actually happening and how it "effected" their bottom line. They were a big name band that got convinced to be the spokesmen for something and it (deservedly) bit them in the ass. If it hadn't been Metallica, it would have been another band, and sooner rather than later.

The reason Metallica's albums haven't been available on iTunes is because the band (allegedly) didn't like the idea of splitting up the album into individual tracks for purchase, when they felt the songs weren't individual pieces, but should be taken as a whole. As someone who has close to 2000 full albums downloaded, and less than 200 individual songs, I can certainly understand that thinking. I'll leave it open to speculation as to why they're allowing it now, but it's obvious they are trying to encourage whole album purchases instead of individual tracks with the exclusive live cuts added onto the albums.

Jimmy James

I'm happy to see it, and I can only hope that it will somehow influence the thinking of the entities in control of some other acts (AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and others) to do something similar.

PerryD

Why is it assumed that the studio wouldn't remaster the albums before releasing to iTunes? Is there some high cost involved that I don't know about? Also both Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets were remastered for their gold DCC release a few years back, couldn't they be used?