I like a fair amount of Metallica's music.
Having said that, i think money is the only thing that matters to them. Some people say that Metallica didn't sell out, they're only doing what they want to do. How convenient for them, their mood always seems to fully blend with the global trends in rock music..i'm not talking about Black album. I'm talking about Load and Reload, completely alternative-influenced records, change of logo, change of style, sound, outfits, everything. After nu-metal, metalcore and other b*llshit became popular, they come out with St. Anger.
And in the height of their uber-commercial success, when they were making money like Bill Gates, they went on with holy crusade against Napster.
Invader is right, Metallica was the only big band to react so strongly. And Perun, you're wrong. The Napster hype was going for two years (at least) when they encountered legal issues. Everyone knew about Napster a while before that. Your neighbour's grandma knew about Napster.
The story goes even before Napster. MP3 sharing was going on for years, it boomed once the Pentium came in, because the 486 couldn't decode (with original algorithm) it in real-time, and Pentium (especially MMX) could encode it in decent time (cca 15 minutes was required for a full lenght album). People started ripping CD's and sharing music via newsgroups, private FTP's, IRC fileservers/XDCC, on every possible way you could imagine. Universities were full of music on their local networks. The recording industry saw that immediately, and went into propaganda alike that one with when cassete tape was introduced decades ago.
So it wasn't like Metallica discovered MP3 piracy and defended their copyrights. Bullshit. They were greedy for money. Nobody would say a thing if a bunch of minor bands went against Napster saying look, we're working our ass off to get a quid for our music and you're distributing it for free, but nooo...Metallica did that. That's why some fans were so pissed, because it cemented their opinion that Metallica is all about the benjamins.
Yes, sharing somebody's music is a theft. But why don't Maiden have problem with it? Go to any general warez forum, non-music and non-metal based, you'll surely run into couple of Maiden records linked to Rapidshare or whatever. Type "Iron Maiden" into any P2P program, you'll get 1000+ hits. The 'net is packed with pirated Maiden material. Why don't Eddie and the boys have a problem with that?
Because they care about their music, they care about their fans, and as long as the attitude is there, they won't feel a loss on their record sales. Ask true Metallica fans, how many of them really bought St. Anger, and ask real Maiden fans, how many of them really bought A Matter Of Life And Death. Then you'll see a difference.
Regarding MP3 sharing, it's really a weird issue. It can help you a lot, it can kill you completely. Funny that this issue was brought, because i've been discussing it lately in great detail. You see, we have a certain project going on here, and we're probably going to sign for a certain company that's EMI affiliate in Croatia. So we've discussed an issue about releasing music for free, etc. You see, i think it's a good move because it can help a lot in terms of "propaganda". However, we can demand such a thing, for the record company to permit legal MP3 download of our stuff. Because we're not a normal case. We have the means to prepare an album in full studio quality by ourselves, therefore the record company will receive a prototype CD that they'll just multiply and distribute throughout the shops.
The whole point is...you need to figure out the whole situation of your band vs. MP3, see if it can help you, see if it can harm you, or see if it can do you nothing. What Metallica got after they killed Napster. Nothing. They even made things worse. They initiated a series of decentralized protocol developments that just can't be killed. Can you shut down torrents? No, you can't. Can you shut down DC++ hubs? No you can't. Napster's only "flaw" was the centralization. The mother company was bonded with the central server, and that server had information of all shares. Can you sue Neo Modus because somebody's has a warez-full DC++ hub? Nope. Neo Modus just developed a protocol. They don't care what people do with that protocol. If you install a Direct Connect hub software on your server and host a warez hub, it's you breaking the laws, not Neo Modus.
Therefore, can MP3s help Maiden's record sales? Probably not. Can MP3s harm Maiden's record sales? No, they can't. That's why they don't do anything about it. MP3's never harmed Metallica's record sales, yet they went into holy crusade.
I say, if i were an artist that makes little money and barely manages to survive with low record sales, and i saw a direct-download MP3s of my stuff somewhere, i'd report that person/server/service/whatever. If i have a lot of money and millions of record sales, and i saw that same thing, i wouldn't give a f*ck. Metallica shouldn't give a f*ck. Do you think that Maiden guys never ran into such a thing? Especially Bruce, who is well educated on computers and spends a fair amount of time on the web. Don't you think he saw piratized Maiden stuff on the 'net, and what you think he did?
And yeah, i heard that Metallica wants to make a '80s style record. That's doomed to fail. Again, with the rise of metal in recent years, they want to jump on the bandwagon. Yet they fail to see one simple thing. Maiden are the kings of the metal world after 30 years because they wanted to make Brave New World, Dance Of Death and A Matter Of Life And Death, not because they wanted to make another Powerslave, Somewhere In Time, or Seventh Son.
